Indeed these were the major downsides. Further, in my Oracle instance, relying on the late-1990s Oracle database server to also run our business logic came wit

Indeed these were the major downsides. Further, in my Oracle instance, relying on the late-1990s Oracle database server to also run our business logic came with performance and scalability concerns, especially around licensing. In my other case, the custom language was terrible, but that's not a complaint about the use of the db engine. The interpreter was implemented in stored procedures, the pages were stored in text fields ... every bit of the stack depended entirely on this off-brand database that had its own issues (like corrupt indexes that needed repairing about once per month.) I think ultimately, in both cases it just felt so much like putting all your eggs in one basket and then hoping you never needed to augment the basket with additional baskets, nor replace the basket with one of a different shape or made of other materials.