In modern development, we're obsessed with abstraction. We have infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and declarative UIs. We package, containerize, and orchestrate everything—except, it seems, for our most critical business logic: data retrieval.
All too often, the logic for finding, fetching, and transforming data is scattered. It lives in microservices, monoliths, and mobile app backends. A simple SELECT statement written for a new feature slowly mutates into a monstrous, multi-table JOIN with business logic baked directly into the application layer. This ad-hoc approach is a breeding ground for complexity, security risks, and technical debt.
What if we could change that? What if we treated our data retrieval logic as a first-class, deployable asset? This is the core idea behind Business-as-Code, a paradigm shift that turns complex queries into simple, powerful, and reusable services. And your next big project should be built on this principle.
Before we dive into the solution, let's diagnose the problem. The "just query the database" mindset, while expedient in the short term, imposes a heavy tax on your team's productivity and your system's security.
Business-as-Code reframes this entire problem. Instead of embedding query logic inside your applications, you define it as a standalone, intelligent workflow. At Searches.do, we call this Search as Software.
Imagine defining a process like find-active-customer-with-recent-orders not as a SQL query, but as a deployable agent. This agent encapsulates everything needed to perform the task:
This isn't just a database view or a stored procedure. It's a version-controlled, testable, and scalable piece of software whose sole job is intelligent data retrieval.
Let's make this concrete. Your support portal, marketing platform, and order management system all need to look up a customer by their email.
The old way involves each application having its own database connection string, its own version of the SQL query, and its own error-handling logic.
The Searches.do way is different. You define an agent once, named find-customer-by-email. Now, any application, written in any language, can access that data with a simple, clean API call.
import { createClient } from 'searches.do';
// Initialize the client with your API key
const searches = createClient(process.env.DO_API_KEY);
// Effortlessly run a pre-defined search agent
async function findCustomer(email: string) {
const customer = await searches.run('find-customer-by-email', {
email: email
});
console.log('Found customer:', customer);
return customer;
}
findCustomer('jane.doe@example.com');
Look at the simplicity of searches.run(). The developer using this function doesn't need to know the database schema, table names, or SQL dialect. They are consuming business logic as a service. The underlying complexity of connecting to a production database, handling authentication, and selecting only the non-sensitive fields is completely abstracted away by the agent.
Adopting a Business-as-Code approach with a platform like Searches.do unlocks immediate and powerful benefits.
Developers can focus on building features, not on writing boilerplate data-access code. They consume data through a clean, semantic API, drastically reducing cognitive load and accelerating development cycles.
By creating a dedicated API for each search, you expose only the necessary data and parameters. This is the Principle of Least Privilege in action. It eliminates the need for direct database access from applications, slashes the risk of injection attacks, and provides a central point for auditing, logging, and access control.
The find-customer-by-email agent is now a reusable asset for your entire organization. If you need to optimize the query or migrate the underlying database, you change it in one place. The agent's API contract remains the same, and all consuming applications continue to work without modification.
Don't let the name 'search' limit your thinking. An agentic workflow can represent any data-oriented task. You can build agents for:
This is the power of turning your data retrieval logic into intelligent, autonomous agents.
Stop letting complex data retrieval logic dictate your architecture and slow down your teams. It's time to treat your business logic with the same discipline as the rest of your codebase. By packaging it into intelligent search and data retrieval agents, you create a more secure, scalable, and maintainable system.
This is more than just a new tool—it's a new way of thinking. It's building with Business-as-Code.
Ready to transform your complex queries into simple, powerful Services-as-Software? Explore Searches.do and build your first intelligent search agent today.