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(Author here) I agree: ORMs as I would traditionally think of them, like Hibernate are very mismatched to SQL databases. In this case, Prisma describes itself

(Author here) I agree: ORMs as I would traditionally think of them, like Hibernate are very mismatched to SQL databases. In this case, Prisma describes itself as an ORM but it maps more like a KV table description with join conditions (I’m not sure how else to describe it). I’d still argue it’s semantics are more compatible with DynamoDB though, complementing rather than working against the underlying storage model.

Arch-TK 4y ago
You know, this tendency to call things which are not actually ORMs ORMs reminds me a lot of the tendency for a lot of "multi paradigm" languages to claim they support OO while actually not supporting true OO (whatever that really means, I'm still not personally sure yet but it's easier to tell when you DON'T have it than when you do). You will have an argument with someone about the flaws in the concept of ORMs and they will pull out something which calls itself an ORM but seems to lack a lot of the core of what an ORM was supposed to do. (This is starting to sound like an appeal to purity but I think the problem here is that terms like OO and ORM are increasingly becoming diluted to the point of being meaningless.) Anyway, I'm not saying that you did anything wrong, you obviously are not the person who originally described Prisma as an ORM, it's on their website. I can sort of understand why the people behind Prisma called it an ORM as it is probably advantageous as a marketing strategy. But I will say that just from a quick glance, Prisma is NOT really an ORM but seemingly far more of just a query generator with nice syntax (e.g. sqlalchemy core). That's not to say it is inferior, it is in my opinion clearly superior, I strongly believe this is the correct sort of tool for helping work with a relational database from any programming language. I just wish people were more precise with terminology.

Arch-TK 4y ago

You know, this tendency to call things which are not actually ORMs ORMs reminds me a lot of the tendency for a lot of "multi paradigm" languages to claim they support OO while actually not supporting true OO (whatever that really means, I'm still not personally sure yet but it's easier to tell when you DON'T have it than when you do). You will have an argument with someone about the flaws in the concept of ORMs and they will pull out something which calls itself an ORM but seems to lack a lot of the core of what an ORM was supposed to do. (This is starting to sound like an appeal to purity but I think the problem here is that terms like OO and ORM are increasingly becoming diluted to the point of being meaningless.) Anyway, I'm not saying that you did anything wrong, you obviously are not the person who originally described Prisma as an ORM, it's on their website. I can sort of understand why the people behind Prisma called it an ORM as it is probably advantageous as a marketing strategy. But I will say that just from a quick glance, Prisma is NOT really an ORM but seemingly far more of just a query generator with nice syntax (e.g. sqlalchemy core). That's not to say it is inferior, it is in my opinion clearly superior, I strongly believe this is the correct sort of tool for helping work with a relational database from any programming language. I just wish people were more precise with terminology.