Unfortunately, no, that&#x27;s not what I meant, sorry.<p>I can&#x27;t give SQLAlchemy (Core or ORM) a string like &quot;SELECT * FROM foo AS f LEFT JOIN bar AS b ON b.id = f.bar_id WHERE f.baz &gt; %(baz)s&quot; and then transform it, by, say, appending the LIMIT clause or adding extra WHERE condition. AFAIK, there&#x27;s no way to provide a raw SQL string and then say something like `query.where(&quot;NOT f.fnord&quot;)` OR `query.limit(10)` and get the updated SQL.<p>With ORMs or non-object-mapping wrappers if I want transformations, I have to use their own language instead of SQL. I do, but don&#x27;t really want to.<p>Or things have changed and this is what SA can do this nowadays? I&#x27;ll be more than happy to learn that I&#x27;m wrong.