[kerblang]

This idea of "the database should be invisible!" abstraction was widely pursued back in the 90's when people were still obsessed with "the network should be invisible!" and Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). A lot of ORM's still reflect this obsession, and some programmers still get angry that they should have to deal with "this low-level SQL nonsense!"

Attempts to make I/O invisible failed and failed and failed again, and continue failing and failing again because it turns out that I/O is incredibly fundamental and not something you can just wave off as "low-level details". A networked database is a massive abstraction in its own right, and if invisible I/O is a doomed abstraction, forget invisible databases. Well, first go fail a few more times, then forget it, because we're not quite there yet on this one, are we...

The bigger the abstraction, the more it leaks. Sometimes you have enough headroom to go further, and sometimes you have to recognize that you've gone way too far.