Check out Gemstone/S. A distributed, persistent and transactional Smalltalk image. It's flat out cool. As far as I know, they have even ported Seaside to run on

Check out Gemstone/S. A distributed, persistent and transactional Smalltalk image. It's flat out cool. As far as I know, they have even ported Seaside to run on top of it, which would make it the ne plus ultra for rich object model web app development. Just like every other odb or network db, the problems only surface when you need to query along paths you didn't design for up front (i.e. when you can no longer chase pointers). That's where rdbms' really shine. And when people not intimately familiar with your apps' object model need some of its data. Expecting some 'analyst' somewhere, to fire up a Smalltalk image, in order to create a report making his boss look good, is probably a bit much.