It isn't a case of a DBAs skills, its the case of people who have a basic knowledge but whose primary tool is not SQL. Users of SAS Analytics for example. I'm interested in designs that maximize the audience that can gain benefit from accessing the data.

There is little point in coming up with a design that requires a data priesthood in order to get business value from data.

As most of my work over the past 12 months has really emphasised the problems caused by poor data quality. Anything that opens the door to poor data quality has to be resisted at all costs in my environment. As data has to be shared with external organisations as part of what my organisation serves its customers poor data quality has a direct affect on revenue.

I'm not sure that your locking statement is true. I could be wrong but I don't think SQL Server locks fields, it locks records and anything that requires more than 5,000 locks results in lock escalation.