So an intrinsic problem with flattening the database is that a lot of applications actually do want to work on a tree of information (that's what the json query part is all about)

Dropping a view can work, but not when the system is under load (found that out the hard way.) I'm not saying its the worst possible situation, just a greater burden than you would expect going into it.

Can you elaborate on `instead of` triggers? How do you make use of those?