Commitment specific to language/vendor and debugging clunkiness are valid points. However, if having code outside the db is even an alternative for you, you are

Commitment specific to language/vendor and debugging clunkiness are valid points. However, if having code outside the db is even an alternative for you, you are already far more deeply committed to some language/framework, or your app is trivial. Debugging databases has slightly different aims than debugging code, and it's much easier since you have the whole relational db available as a debugging tool. It's effortless to store states in temporary tables.