Indeed, it certainly needn't be #1. The recent migration to "micro-orm" such as Dapper (.Net) and Yesql (Clojure), just thin wrappers over ODBC/JDBC shows that

Indeed, it certainly needn't be #1. The recent migration to "micro-orm" such as Dapper (.Net) and Yesql (Clojure), just thin wrappers over ODBC/JDBC shows that ORMs aren't the end-all. Yes they lack composability and type safety. You could easily add composibility in the guise of something line various existing JsonQL libraries. Type safety, at some point (crossing process/network boundaries) you just have to be pragmatic and let go.