Since this was written Rails has become much better about this kind of thing. I think Arel and some of the other work that really helped was happening more tha

Since this was written Rails has become much better about this kind of thing. I think Arel and some of the other work that really helped was happening more than 10 years ago now (how time flies!) but it was a non-trivial upgrade so a lot of production sites didn't switch over for a few more years.