I got a question from a developer whether they should use SharePoint lists or database tables to hold the data for his application. This is a fair question and as a consultant I will start with the standard answer: It depends.
I will follow up that answer with the standard consultant question: what are you trying to do? There generally isn’t one answer for any technology choice. We need to take as many factors into account as possible. Who will be maintaining the data? Will the data only be used in your SharePoint application or does it need to be available across the enterprise and used by a multitude of systems? What standards are already in place for application data? Are there security concerns for this data? All of these questions and more need to be answered in order to decide where you should store your data.