P: support an external database for the catalog?

I just have one catalog for all my personal photos, so I can make use of the face tagging. So it would be counter-productive to split it into multiple catalogs each with their own face DB. But as each year goes by, it gets bigger, and Lightroom gets slower. So why not have support for storing the catalog in an external SQL database like digiKam does? Could even one-up digiKam with an offline mode to cache the catalog locally to do work when off the network and then sync back when you return. Then I wouldn't need to overspec my personal computer just for my Lightroom catalog. Which I only really use for organizing, and not really at all for editing (and Bridge doesn't do tagging, and Lightroom CC doesn't support XMP face region metadata because Reasons).