op here. I'm not sure about using the database as a dumb database. The only times I've seen that done the code was so bad that the datbase structure was not rea

op here. I'm not sure about using the database as a dumb database. The only times I've seen that done the code was so bad that the datbase structure was not really the main concern. I will say that often there are a lot of missing indexes and foreign keys in those situations. I get my understanding of the data model from the database. Foreign keys not only help constrain things to valid data but they provide a nice map to navigate the database with. > Perhaps that's the real source of the OP's question, the perspective of someone who's well-versed enough with RDBMSes and their ability to manipulate/process data before it even reaches the application, even with only portable[1] SQL. Yeah you are totally correct here. I find I can significantly reduce the complexity of the code by putting a lot of logic into the SQL. SQL is a very good domain specific language. Additionally the database is very efficient at it's job. I've never been able to replicate this in an ORM. In ORMs I have found the large number of database queries can make it difficult to move the database to a different machine to the application. But even this aside I have to learn a lot to use a tool such as hibernate. All that learning and added complexity has to pay for itself somewhere. I'm not sure I've seen that pay off. But I honestly think I'm missing something.