Imagine my users table has a unique constraint on email address. Or my hotel_room_reservations table has to guarantee I never store overlapping reservations for the same room. In either case, on insert and on update, I need to check the new or updated row vs a bunch of other rows.
Those scenarios make horizontal scaling not so simple. Sure, get rid of those constraints, and you can insert as fast as your network can ship the bytes. But that's not a database anymore. That's a glorified flat file.
Those scenarios make horizontal scaling not so simple. Sure, get rid of those constraints, and you can insert as fast as your network can ship the bytes. But that's not a database anymore. That's a glorified flat file.