I like your points. It clarifies for me that the goals of Active Record and other forms of ORM are so different that it's misleading to categorise them togethe

I like your points. It clarifies for me that the goals of Active Record and other forms of ORM are so different that it's misleading to categorise them together. Active Record presents a simple and unambiguous interface to the way things are, [other systems that I don't have a noun for] try to abstract it away. The way we use databases is interesting. In the early days of computing, a lot of the low hanging fruit was reached via software that wrapped databases. As a result, the database tools reached awesome power, maturity, and mindshare. As a result, they now get used for things well outside of their domain. I suspect there are patterns that get squeezed out by this, and it's a topic I'm interested in exploring.