Even without stored procedures, its not easy. To really take advantage of a database engine, you will probably end up using engine-specific idioms. Postgres a

Even without stored procedures, its not easy. To really take advantage of a database engine, you will probably end up using engine-specific idioms. Postgres and Sql Server support recursive CTEs. MySql probably doesn't? Sql Server supports cursors but is dog slow and generally not recommended for any sort of large scale operations. Isolation levels and locking are really important as well. Do all engines even support the same isolation levels?