More generally, there are basically two kinds of apps that connect to a database: "application databases" that are the primary or sole user of a database and us

More generally, there are basically two kinds of apps that connect to a database: "application databases" that are the primary or sole user of a database and use it for all their persistence needs, and "integration databases" that are one of many interacting with the database. Web apps usually work with application databases. AFAIK Martin Fowler coined this terminology/distinction, see http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ApplicationDatabase.html http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ApplicationDatabase.html . For application databases, usually having any kind of view/stored procs/triggers/prepared statements is a smell that you're conflating business logic with persistence.