In Ruby on Rails, ActiveRecord has a method called pluck that returns the result set as an array of strings or as an array of array of strings. I've totally don

In Ruby on Rails, ActiveRecord has a method called pluck that returns the result set as an array of strings or as an array of array of strings. I've totally done this in areas that need performance. In my experience, if you are concerned with just showing some data you should specify the columns instead of doing a *. ActiveRecord also supports that. So, for the bulk case. ORM is safer than straight SQL and allows for more easily testable business logic. It does not block doing the things you suggest even if it is not the most common approach.