Yeah I'm using raw JDBC for the same reason; I like knowing the exact SQL that's going to be used and it's nice to be able to freely use non-SQL-standard things

Yeah I'm using raw JDBC for the same reason; I like knowing the exact SQL that's going to be used and it's nice to be able to freely use non-SQL-standard things that your particular database supports. It's trivial to write a custom wrapper to make things easier, and simple case classes in Scala to represent the DB records make for a single line code change when the DB model changes.