+1 -- treating the database and the backend as two separate services with their own release lifecycles and APIs is "obvious"... ...well, once someone says it o

+1 -- treating the database and the backend as two separate services with their own release lifecycles and APIs is "obvious"... ...well, once someone says it out loud. :) After that, of course it makes sense that they would have a need for an API compatibility window across at least two versions. It's exactly the same issues as supporting a backend and client side where you can't instantaneously force an update to all clients. With your DB, you're in control of the version, but you're certainly not in control of making it "instantaneously", so the same rules apply as when you're waiting for some curmudgeon user to update: API versioning and a support window. Now, if only we had an automagic way to make it less painful for a project to support two different versions of an API from the same codebase....