Ask HN: Should databases be as smart or stupid as possible?

1 pointeibrahim1 comment

I made a comment to my coworker that "databases should be as dump as possible and should do as little as possible". He disagreed and said that they should be as smart as possible.

I couldn't backup my opinion but it is just a gut feeling (experience?) that databases should be used as simply stupd data stores with zero logic or code or anything other than data.

Who is right and why?

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if data storage and data analysis were wholly independent activities, the logical separation would make a lot of sense, e.g. dumb database is good at data storage, utilities are good at specific analytic functions.

Due to resource bottlenecks these two activities are currently closely coupled. As a result there is no clear cut answer one way or the other.

One aspect currently is a trade off between managing complexity and performance. Of course there are many other factors. Case by case basis.

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