> but the challenge is if folks can access the database directly This is not the challenge. The challenge is that you think you can do an 'almost-as-good' job

> but the challenge is if folks can access the database directly This is not the challenge. The challenge is that you think you can do an 'almost-as-good' job of data integrity as the RDBMS designers. Even if you could, you will not always be the person that maintains that code.