Generally I agree doing SQL queries on your own. I'm also not really an ORM-Fan because it's really hard to debug and difficult queries are more difficult to co

Generally I agree doing SQL queries on your own. I'm also not really an ORM-Fan because it's really hard to debug and difficult queries are more difficult to construct using an ORM. But doing your SQL Statements in the Controller is just not the way to go.. What if you need the same query on different places? What I like about good ORMs (like Doctrine or the ActiveRecord of RoR) is the migration part. Maybe there should be a tool which only supports you in creating the tables and handling migrations.