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I am sure there are good use cases for triggers but I have seen quite a few databases that used triggers a lot and it almost always felt like the equivalent of spaghetti code. Things are happening and it takes forever to figure out why they are happening.

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Depends on your perspective. Yes, if you are an application developer with weaker skills to access the data integrity logic in the database. No, if are a skilled database guy with weaker knowledge of all the source code of all the applications (could be multiple) sharing the database. Things are happening and it takes forever pouring thru each app's code to find its data integrity logic to figure out why they are happening.

By centralizing data integrity logic in the database, you know where to look and that all apps using the database will abide by it.

I agree with you but in the cases I saw I felt that the triggers were used to fix problems in the code more than being part of a consistent data strategy. I admire well designed databases but unfortunately there aren’t too many of them out there.

I think part of the problem is that there is still this huge chasm between good coding skills and good database skills. It’s hard to have both.

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