Hello Jason,
There is no other official and supported approach, because of the database changes are suggested and supported as well. According to the fact that your env is just LAB, you can easily try to make DB changes directly (of course with backuping DB before), but within any production environment this step will be just up to you and at your own risk (nobody will fix it).
From my point of view and according to my real-life experience, the best way is through the PSDK, where the data consistency is guaranteed.
HTH!
Regards,
--Jakub--