You have to distinguish between heavyweight ORMs that impose their own data model and lightweight ORMs which just provide transparent query builders and static

You have to distinguish between heavyweight ORMs that impose their own data model and lightweight ORMs which just provide transparent query builders and static typing for query calls from your given programming language. The former is frustrating to use in my experience but the latter tends to make SQL easier to work with without taking away any of the power and expressiveness of SQL.