I am working on an internal Umbraco package that creates relationships between Umbraco Members. We already built it in .net framework and used custom database tables for the relationships and members. Then we upgraded the package to .net 8 and used the examine indexes instead so that we could be better integrated into Umbraco Members. However this has been a much bigger problem as the indexes are often out of sync or need to be rebuilt and with more than 70.000 members it can take a long time to rebuild. For example it is currently taking me around 30 minutes to rebuild the MembersIndex in Examine. I am starting to think it would be better to just use custom database tables instead. Is that approach frowned upon in package development? We want to use best practices and also try to be as integrated into Umbraco as we can. What do you think?

IMO nothing wrong with using custom DB tables what so ever IMO. Use package migrations to add/alter your DB tables as needed when the package is installed.

Great, that is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you Warren!

No problem.