Database Server Vs. Application Servers - Processing Location

Just wondering what others opinions are on this subject...

Within our company, there are some who think in-house developed applications should be architectured such that there is no dependence on the underlying database server software - the database server should only do CRUD (create,read,update,delete) processing.

This might at first seem sensible to some, I think there are way too many "gray areas" to say the above should be a "standard" that must be adhered to or have permission to do differently. I am guessing this is some people's intent.

Some people spend way too much effort trying to not "tie" themselves to 1 database vendor and don't take advantage of features and functionality (in Oracle for our company), at a significant loss either by lost functionality or performance or "writing their own way". Or, they do things like put hints in the SQL to tune and are "tied" anyway.

Note: I can see where a software vendor should/has to try and work this way. But, this does not seem to make sense for a commercial company like ours.

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