I think this is more about Active Record the design pattern, than ActiveRecord the Rails component. Active Record is a really easy to use pattern and ActiveRec

I think this is more about Active Record the design pattern, than ActiveRecord the Rails component. Active Record is a really easy to use pattern and ActiveRecord is a very humane implementation. Data Mapper (the pattern) is more complex. Trying to get a Data Mapper implementation to do all of the things the ActiveRecord implementation in Rails does is really hard- it's always going to be harder when you need the object model structure to significantly deviate from the database structure.