Hi everyone - still very new to PW, but I am coming up against this decision too.
First just let me say how awesome I think the pages model works for the structure of a typical website, but when it comes to a web app (the distinction between a site and an app is often vague in my mind), I am wondering if perhaps it wouldn't be better to go with a custom database table to store user submitted data and use SQL (which I am comfortable with).
I do feel at times like the PW pages model and API it is making things more cumbersome when it comes to data querying and manipulation (but quite possibly this is just my inexperience with it still). The database is starting to fill up with so many tables - maybe this really isn't something I should be concerned about, it just feels inefficient - seems like there must be lots of joins going on to pull all this data together.
I am certainly no database guru, so maybe this is fine, but are there any guidelines/use examples as to when it might be more appropriate to go with custom tables?
Thanks