[dagheti]

I agreed with your overall point, but I was expanding on part of what you were saying:

You seem to appreciate how Haskell allows you to separate your pure code from your non-referentially transparent monadic code. This gives you reasoning where you can have it, and you use monads where you can't.

I'm just saying that same argument applies in databases where using a relational database allows you to separate your total code from your pure code. You use the value-based relational strategy where you can have it (necessary and sufficient for database management), and you use functional (or imperative) programming where you can't.