Perhaps the problem the OP is referring to is code like<p><pre><code>    foreach($things as $thing) {
      $thing-&gt;setValue(&#x27;new value&#x27;);
    } 
</code></pre>
and then looping through 10000 rows to do that, instead of using an UPDATE query.<p>I think the best criticism of ActiveRecord (and ORM in general) is performance, but it&#x27;s only relevant on medium-to-large websites. It is a fantastic design pattern for prototyping, and good enough for production on small-to-medium websites as long as there are caching layers above it.