I’m like @navigate in that I use external databases (MariaDB Galera & CockroachDB clusters) to update and query huge amounts of data. I’ve never really used the built in data tables in anger, as my inserts can hit well over 100,000 per minute. Not always, but it can do.
All of my back end is now Python, but a lot of it is running on my own servers so that I can control resource availability. Data inserts don’t even really need to be connected to Anvil via uplink, and i have my own consistent data manipulation API which takes care of whatever db I am using.
That detachment has allowed me to change db technologies without any impact on the front end whatsoever.