Is ORM still an anti-pattern?

• TypeORM

  156 33,287 9.0 TypeScript

  ORM for TypeScript and JavaScript. Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MS SQL Server, Oracle, SAP Hana, WebSQL databases. Works in NodeJS, Browser, Ionic, Cordova and Electron platforms.

  

It is a link to a specific comment on a GitHub issue [0] where multiple users chime in and report facing the same issue.

Someone honestly trying to refute my comment in good faith could have looked around and easily understood this.

They would then have found another comment [1], mentioning a pull request [2] supposedly fixing this issue, that explicitly aims to fix "performance issues".

If that was not a bug, then I don’t know what is.

But then, I understand that this can be a lot to ask.

Personally, I believe the only valid criticism that could stand here would be that, not having bothered to check if it still was an issue, I perhaps should have instead used the past tense, out of precaution, instead of assuming the bug had been fixed two to three years after being initially reported. And I shall try to remember that.

So thank you, I guess.

[0]: https://github.com/typeorm/typeorm/issues/4499

[1]: https://github.com/typeorm/typeorm/issues/4499#issuecomment-...

[2]: https://github.com/typeorm/typeorm/pull/8169

• lago

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• SQLpage

  36 777 9.8 Rust

  SQL-only webapp builder, empowering data analysts to build websites and applications quickly

SQL is much more powerful than most people think, and taking an afternoon to learn everything you can do with it is a great investment.

After you do that, you will probably not WANT an ORM anymore, finding that it makes your code less readable than plain sql, not simpler.

Actually, you'll even realize that you may not need anything BUT sql to write your application, using something like (shameless plug) SQLPage [1]

[1] https://sql.ophir.dev

• sqlite-fast

  2 12 4.7 C#

  A high performance, low allocation SQLite wrapper targeting .NET Standard 2.0.

I think this is the sweet spot. Last time I worked with SQLite on .NET I wrote a wrapper library along those lines: https://github.com/zmj/sqlite-fast

• potygen

  3 86 2.8 TypeScript

  Postgres SQL Parser and type generator

I used to agree 100% with this sentiment, as dissatisfaction with available ORMs at the time (early days of doctrine in PHP) drove me to actually write my own. Turned out an amazing exercise in why orms are hard.

Anyway a few years later I was in a position to start things fresh with a new project so thought to myself, great lets try to do things right this time - so went all the way in the other direction - raw sql everywhere, with some great sql analyzer lib (https://github.com/ivank/potygen) that would strictly type and format with prettier all the queries - kinda plugged all the possible disadvantages of raw query usage and was a breeze to work with … for me.

What I learned was that ORMs have other purposes - they kinda force you to think about the data model (even if giving you fewer tools to do so) With the amount of docs and tutorials out there it allows even junior members of the team to feel confident about building the system. I’m pretty used to sql, and thinking in it and its abstractions is easy for me, but its a skill a lot of modern devs have not acquired with all of our document dbs and orms so it was really hard on them to switch from thinking in objects and the few ways orms allows you to link them, to thinking in tables and the vast amounts of operations and dependencies you can build with them. Indexable json fields, views, CTEs, window functions all that on top of the usual relation theory … it was quite a lot to learn.

And the thing is while you can solve a lot of problems with raw sql, orms usually have plugins and extensions that solve common problems, things like soft delete, i18n, logs and audit, etc. Its easy even if its far from simple. With raw sql you have to deal with all that yourself, and while it can be done and done cleanly, still require intuition about performance characteristics that a lot of new devs just don’t possess yet. You need to be an sql expert to solve those in a reasonable manner m, just an average dev could easily string along a few plugins and call it a day. Would it have great performance? Probably not. Would it hold some future pitfalls because they did not understand the underlying sql? Absolutely! But hay it will work, at least for a while. And to be fair they would easily do those mistakes with raw sql as well, but with far few resources to understand why it would fail, because orms fail in predictable ways and there is usually tons of relevant blog posts and such about how to fix it.

It just allows for an better learning curve - learn a bit, build, fail, learn more, fix, repeat. Whereas raw sql requires a big upfront “learn” cost, while still going through the “fail” step more often than not.

Now I’m trying out a fp query builder / ORM - elixir’s ecto with the hopes that it gives me the best of both worlds … time will tell.

• sqlc

  169 10,837 9.7 Go

  Generate type-safe code from SQL

  

Some examples for anyone else reading:

https://github.com/kyleconroy/sqlc

https://github.com/cornucopia-rs/cornucopia

This is my preferred method of interacting with databases now.

Very flexible.

• cornucopia

  20 697 4.6 Rust

  Generate type-checked Rust from your PostgreSQL.

  

Some examples for anyone else reading:

https://github.com/kyleconroy/sqlc

https://github.com/cornucopia-rs/cornucopia

This is my preferred method of interacting with databases now.

Very flexible.

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• jOOQ

  94 5,882 9.8 Java

  jOOQ is the best way to write SQL in Java

  

> I've been doing ORM on Java since Hibernate was new, and it has always sucked.

Have you ever looked at something like myBatis? In particular, the XML mappers: https://mybatis.org/mybatis-3/dynamic-sql.html

Looking back, I actually quite liked it - you had conditionals and ability to build queries dynamically (including snippets, doing loops etc.), while still writing mostly SQL with a bit of XML DSL around it, which didn't suck as much as one might imagine. The only problem was that there was still writing some boilerplate, which I wasn't the biggest fan of.

Hibernate always felt like walking across a bridge that might collapse at any moment (one eager fetch away from killing the performance, or having some obscure issue related to the entity mappings), however I liked tooling that let you point towards your database and get a local set of entities mapped automatically, even though codegen also used to have some issues occasionally (e.g. date types).

That said, there's also projects like jOOQ which had a more code centric approach, although I recall it being slightly awkward to use in practice: https://www.jooq.org/ (and the autocomplete killed the performance in some IDEs because of all the possible method signatures)

More recently, when working on a Java project, I opted for JDBI3, which felt reasonably close to what you're describing, at the expense of not being able to build dynamic queries as easily, as it was with myBatis: https://jdbi.org/

That said, with the multi-line string support we have in Java now, it was rather pleasant regardless: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/2-4-pidgeot-a-system-for-m...

I don't think there's a silver bullet out there, everything from lightweight ORMs, to heavy ORMs like Hibernate, or even writing pure SQL has drawbacks. You just have to make the tradeoffs that will see you being successful in your particular project.

• JDBI

  27 1,901 9.4 Java

  The Jdbi library provides convenient, idiomatic access to relational databases in Java and other JVM technologies such as Kotlin, Clojure or Scala.

  

> I've been doing ORM on Java since Hibernate was new, and it has always sucked.

Have you ever looked at something like myBatis? In particular, the XML mappers: https://mybatis.org/mybatis-3/dynamic-sql.html

Looking back, I actually quite liked it - you had conditionals and ability to build queries dynamically (including snippets, doing loops etc.), while still writing mostly SQL with a bit of XML DSL around it, which didn't suck as much as one might imagine. The only problem was that there was still writing some boilerplate, which I wasn't the biggest fan of.

Hibernate always felt like walking across a bridge that might collapse at any moment (one eager fetch away from killing the performance, or having some obscure issue related to the entity mappings), however I liked tooling that let you point towards your database and get a local set of entities mapped automatically, even though codegen also used to have some issues occasionally (e.g. date types).

That said, there's also projects like jOOQ which had a more code centric approach, although I recall it being slightly awkward to use in practice: https://www.jooq.org/ (and the autocomplete killed the performance in some IDEs because of all the possible method signatures)

More recently, when working on a Java project, I opted for JDBI3, which felt reasonably close to what you're describing, at the expense of not being able to build dynamic queries as easily, as it was with myBatis: https://jdbi.org/

That said, with the multi-line string support we have in Java now, it was rather pleasant regardless: https://blog.kronis.dev/tutorials/2-4-pidgeot-a-system-for-m...

I don't think there's a silver bullet out there, everything from lightweight ORMs, to heavy ORMs like Hibernate, or even writing pure SQL has drawbacks. You just have to make the tradeoffs that will see you being successful in your particular project.

• NORM

  3 108 7.6 PLpgSQL

  NORM - No ORM framework (by hettie-d)

• Sequel

  36 4,895 9.0 Ruby

  Sequel: The Database Toolkit for Ruby

Ruby sequel (http://sequel.jeremyevans.net/) is the only library where you can combine classic ORM Model bases usage, with a more raw query builder "just get me all the data into plain objects". You'll never need anything again in your career life.

• sqlx

  144 11,742 9.2 Rust

  🧰 The Rust SQL Toolkit. An async, pure Rust SQL crate featuring compile-time checked queries without a DSL. Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. (by launchbadge)

  

• postgres

  42 6,704 8.2 JavaScript

  Postgres.js - The Fastest full featured PostgreSQL client for Node.js, Deno, Bun and CloudFlare (by porsager)

Demonstrate how easily and accidentally one can make an SQL injection with these:

https://github.com/porsager/postgres

https://github.com/gajus/slonik

• slonik

  71 4,381 9.2 TypeScript

  A Node.js PostgreSQL client with runtime and build time type safety, and composable SQL.

Demonstrate how easily and accidentally one can make an SQL injection with these:

https://github.com/porsager/postgres

https://github.com/gajus/slonik

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