[DrScientist]

I think you are mixing two problems - having the part of the DB exposed, and whether people then build brittle stuff on top.

My point is that if people build brittle stuff on top that's not a problem of the DB being accessible per se.

That could just as easily happen against an API.

I assume you had was some problem with ORM's and automatically built data structures etc - I would argue that's a problem with those, not with the DB.