Yes Bart this is working as you expected, so you can potentially have different domain models (thus database schema's) when you are working on uncommitted features or your colleagues have not updated yet. I wouldn't recommend using the same database in these situations.
Also note that even if your changes don't lead to a database change, they could still mean that data becomes corrupt. For example: You added a new attribute to an object and committed it. Then your colleagues update but you then decide that that attribute should be required. So you change it and even commit the change but your colleagues don't update. This means they can create instances of that entity that are 'corrupt' according to your domain model.
In general, I'd say just use your own database during development.
The database updating is indeed altered it is now managed by svn versioning which makes it easier to handle conflicts between forms/database changes and microflow changes. Whether you want to commit a certain change or not really depends on the situation. On how life changing they are.
But as a rule of thumb we have agreed to update only untill the functionality you are working on is finished.