> he campaigned for putting the entire web app into an Oracle database with all the logic in stored procedures. Oracle have already done this, it's called Appl

> he campaigned for putting the entire web app into an Oracle database with all the logic in stored procedures. Oracle have already done this, it's called Application Express[0]. I used it for my last job. In practice it was pretty good for fast prototyping and iterating on database-backed apps. It took the schema as the source of truth and would add useful interface features based on it (eg, dropdown lists derived from foreign keys, converting some check constraints to javascript validation code etc). But on the downside it was essentially untestable and version control meant dumping a massive file of autogenerated PL/SQL and checking it into git. For anything more complicated than basic CRUD and reporting you'd wind up cracking the hood to directly use PL/SQL and then skin it with APEX. The tradeoff being that you lost some of the roundtrip niceties. I wouldn't recommend it in general, but it fit ... OK in its context. It was included in the Oracle license, the org had experience with operating Oracle and it allowed each of us in a small programming group to build little apps to solve genuine business problems that were either too small to select OSS/COTS or too specialised to find anything to select. The best part of the job was getting rid of painful processes built around sharing Excel and Word docs. I remember occasion when a user broke down in tears because a (to me) trivial app meant that a stressful, high-pressure, error-prone month-long process turned into a non-event. One of the best days of my career and I partially owe it to a platform that I think is, in most respects, a mistake. [0] https://apex.oracle.com/en/ https://apex.oracle.com/en/