I would always use an ORM over raw SQL but this doesn't make any sense, your ORM is still going to run a query on the same DB engine. It is much harder to optim

I would always use an ORM over raw SQL but this doesn't make any sense, your ORM is still going to run a query on the same DB engine. It is much harder to optimize an ORM query, but if you're only writing very simple operations you don't typically need to. The power of ORMs (at least light weight ones) is compile time types and parameters by default.