The Problem With Free Software CMS's

DUDE! PHP CMS's, Forums, Galleries, and Blogs all have two things in common:

1. They are database driven apps
2. None of them use the database


Confused? Let me explain. The assorted projects in the cloud try to abstract the database out of their application so that they are not dependent on them in anyway. This gives them the advantage of supporting multiple databases. But that also means the application does not leverage their single most important quality -- the database!

There are so many things that get left out of applications that run primarily on MySQL anyway -- triggers, procedures, hierarchies, date/time functions, string manipulations, certain kind of joins, sub-queries. As a result the applications are relatively weak compared to custom applications that take full advantage of the data tier.

I'd like to see more free software applications make full utilization of the data tier and stop playing to the lowest common denominator.

In the future my projects will take this path.