To ORM or Not to ORM
I've come to a couple conclusions, over the years.<p>First, when you get down to it, the most-valued feature of ORMs is not the "writing queries in some language other than SQL" feature, it's the "not having to write a mess of mapping code" feature.<p>Second, the biggest drawbacks to ORMs all derive from the "writing queries in some language other than SQL" feature.<p>Fortunately, there are tools out there that solve the "mapping tables to objects" problem without trying to control all access to the database: So-called lightweight ORMs like Dapper and Sql2o. To me, these hit the sweet spot: They give you most the increase in productivity while steering clear of most the increase in complexity (and, by extension, decrease in maintainability).