I have seen large database heavy apps. They are the cleanest I've ever worked with. I've had no trouble composing SQL. I can't think of one example where this h

I have seen large database heavy apps. They are the cleanest I've ever worked with. I've had no trouble composing SQL. I can't think of one example where this has been an issue. You need to rely on views, functions and tables to store your business rules and look up the rules. The big down side I see is the learning curve. Writing business logic in the database is not easy and not easy to maintain. It can take half a day to grow a large function. Even longer to debug sometimes. But you learn to structure things well.