George Jardine, Adobe's Pro Photography Evangelist, the bloke fronting Lightroom, is pretty clear about what kind of product it's not going to be. In this discussion of podcast 8:

…we felt from the beginning that a database is the best answer for Lightroom photo asset management. We are committed to building as robust of image management solution for digital photographers as we possibly can, while keeping it streamlined, easy to use, and discoverable. That's a balance. We do not intend on building generic “digital asset management” for all workflows.