Have you ever compared the speed of a Data Access cursor update vs using the field calculator? Using data access cursors is a rite of passage for developers using python for ArcGIS, surely. Write a few more lines of code to save some processing time. Next thing you know, your python code is getting complicated.
A few years ago I started using pymssql with SQL Servers and cx_Oracle with Oracle Databases in my python scripts. In ArcGIS Pro now, looks like pymssql is getting antiquated, because Conda cant install it - it's not easy to install with a wheel and its less easy to get that wheel to work in the propy conda environment.
