babel-plugin-transform-typescript-metadata VS Objection.js

MikroORM is a little better in that they have an alternative strategy that only requires your build tool to support type (1) but not type (2) https://github.com/leonardfactory/babel-plugin-transform-typescript-metadata

Objection.js is a SQL-friendly ORM for Node.js that supports various relational databases, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. It provides a flexible and expressive query builder. Objection.js is known for its expressive syntax, allowing developers to build complex queries easily. It supports eager loading, transactions, and migrations.

I don't think there's a best per say, but we did recently use Objection on our project. Did the job well, only issue is there's no constructor for the DB Models but it's just something you work around (https://vincit.github.io/objection.js/)

If you aren't using TypeScript I'd very much recommend Objection.js, I've used it multiple times and no complaints so far. You can pass raw SQL queries to it as well so I'm sure it would be a good fit for your project!

I'd also like to point out objection js is no longer actively maintained. I'm going to switch my work's codebase from it eventually because of it.

You should look into Objection.js. IMHO using that will make your life much easier as it seems you are trying to reimplement it's features in this sample code.

Next, let’s set up the database for our newly created Nest application. I’ll be using PostgreSQL, but you can use any of the databases Knex supports. To interact with our database, we’ll be using Objection.js, which is an ORM for Node.js built on top Knex. For this tutorial, we’ll be using Nest Objection, a Nest module for Objection.