We are thinking to implement more server side events indeed and automatically run actions upon their trigger.
The first candidate for this will be time scheduling in NodeJS. So you can run actions automatically at specific time. Much what you do now with cron jobs in PHP.
Database triggers however are very much database dependent and difficult to implement. Also using such triggers is very error prone to your business logic. Changes get executed that you don’t know why and from where. So very difficult to debug.
Usually it is easier just to centralize your database updates in the right server connect actions and then within the same actions, after the database update step, do your extra actions. This will preserve your business logic and have it all in one central place and not scatter it all over the place.