Before we go anywhere with databases let me say this.  If your database doesn't have stored procedures, then it is NOT a database.   That's why I am so glad that MySql now supports them.

Databases are an important part of any large and complex software application.  Most software engineers lean the very basics of databases and then stop.  The folks who work in the IT shops are usually a lot more conversant with database applications.  A lot of IT applications are database applications at heart and the IT folks are always messing around with them to fix problems or get answers to questions no one else had before.

I spent a few years working on database tools.  These tools allowed the application designer to start with the database design and automated the creation of the user interface from there.   We ported the application from its native flat file system to interface to a number of databases.  

We spent a lot of time translating the existing code from flat file access into high performance database queries.  You learn a lot about how databases behave when you start messing with that kind of stuff.

This is also where I started with the analytics, but that is explained in that section.  Go check that out to see what that is all about.