I agree, all products die, but how you integrate is all the difference. When you start reaching into the private guts of the system (in this case, the database

I agree, all products die, but how you integrate is all the difference. When you start reaching into the private guts of the system (in this case, the database), you are hopelessly intertwined with them. There are much cleaner ways to do this that makes a migration to something new a lot less painful.