>> It depends on the ORM you use Yes, some ORM's are more flexible than others. >> ... one of the pro ORM arguments is that it generates database-specific SQL

>> It depends on the ORM you use Yes, some ORM's are more flexible than others. >> ... one of the pro ORM arguments is that it generates database-specific SQL ... portable between different RDBMS Yes, hand writing SQL will break this but: - it is rare in my experience to completely migrate to a different RDBMS - migrating to a different RDBMS should easily be viewed by everyone from management to development as a very tricky process that will take time to perform correctly. Part of this time will be tuning your custom queries. - the ORM promise that it's queries are RDBMS independent is not broken >> Another point: your ORM would automatically pick up changes to your model and cope with it, not your hand-written SQL, making your code harder to maintain. Writing everything by hand (known alternative 1 from the article) makes your code even harder to maintain because there will be zero changes that are automatically picked up. Depending on the KV store you use, his second alternative may not have this problem. TLDR: Hand writing sql comes with a cost, but the overal cost of "ORM + a bit of handwritten sql" is likely to be much less than "everything handwritten".