Thing is, for a lot of applications, the structure of the database is _much_ more important than the structure of the code. It's easier to refactor your code la

Thing is, for a lot of applications, the structure of the database is _much_ more important than the structure of the code. It's easier to refactor your code later than to deal with a database which is structured incorrectly, since when you refactor that you risk losing the data, have to run change scripts and have downtime, etc. You can view the database as merely being there to support your program, or you can view your program as being there to manage the database. If it's the latter, then it's not surprising that the database design impacts the design of your code. So we don't keep it at arm's length, because it's much more important and complex than a 3rd party API or even a filesystem.