Not necessarily, but I get your point. When I say Invoice.Select(1234) I want the data engine to query 20 nicely normalized tables and bring me back one object

Not necessarily, but I get your point. When I say Invoice.Select(1234) I want the data engine to query 20 nicely normalized tables and bring me back one object with the invoice I am looking for. The same when I say Invoice.Update() Most DBAs are very jealous of their territory and rarely collaborate with programmers in how to make that process transparent to both of them.