You can get most of the benefit of an ORM mapper with migration functionality from something like this or sqitch (I use sqitch). There are really good reasons t

You can get most of the benefit of an ORM mapper with migration functionality from something like this or sqitch (I use sqitch). There are really good reasons to use this over the built-in ORM mapper migrations: - The built-in ORM mapper migrations facility might be an afterthought (I’m looking at you, Sequelize) - You explicitly want to separate database migrations from code changes so that the code needs to be written in such a way that it can run (at reduced functionality if required) with or without the migration, and the presence of the migration should not affect the execution of the code. It’s way too easy with in-built migrations to make a migration that results in downtime. Practicing direct migration with SQL drivers is going to be safer every time.