While having a database online is a cool thing, they need to start offering basic hosting to make this really kick off. Roundtrips will be the major bottleneck

While having a database online is a cool thing, they need to start offering basic hosting to make this really kick off. Roundtrips will be the major bottleneck, so the solution would be to never leave the server. So, hosting apps like AppEngine is the only way. Or, just offer online databases but with an access-like interface (plenty of potential use cases here) so people store and use the data right there, possibly offering a great reporting tool (like what Crystal used to be eons ago) with a casual REST request for external reports and stuff, but never for external intensive use.