

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

I made a comment to my coworker that &quot;databases should be as dump as possible and should do as little as possible&quot;.  He disagreed and said that they should be as smart as possible.<p>I couldn&#x27;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.<p>Who is right and why?
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technoir
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.

