[rdnetto]

A variation on this would be to put the database behind a service that abstracted over the schema, though that only works for basic CRUD queries and not complex aggregations. This service would probably evolve from the monolith.

[rhizome]

It sounds like you're describing ORM-as-API. Which, if you find you need it, great, but I wouldn't try to fool myself that introducing a mediating process like that is all that different from what the language/framework likely already provides (contemporary development frameworks are common). It's just ("just") abstracted to operate on network basis. Actually, what you describe sounds like a reduction in functionality from a non-API model.

Hopefully that parses as English, it's still morning for me.

[collyw]

You mean like an API?