The biggest OMG when you look at Drupal 7's db at first is: "why there are so many tables?". There were lots of debates regarding Drupal db schema, but if backdrop's target is small to mid projects and better performance, there should be a movement towards getting rid of current "table per field" approach.
There can be something similar to Drupal 6 CCK approach: table per bundle and if field is multivalued it lives in a separate table. There was a project called "PBS" (https://drupal.org/project/pbs) that tried to accomplish that goal but it didn't work out for some reasons.
So what do you things about such a feature?
Recent comments
Thanks, the /tmp folder was the problem. I moved it elsewhere and then the updated worked. Thanks again!
Update 1.35.1 appears to install but hasn't
Probably not the reason, but worth to do a quick check: Sometimes the update cache interferes, so if something's odd with updates - some module (or core) claims to have updated, but then...
Update 1.35.1 appears to install but hasn't
Nope, not touched any permissions!
Update 1.35.1 appears to install but hasn't