> then replacing the ORM entirely with raw SQL, anyway it is usually never the case. Why would you build a complex app only to tear it appart with going back

> then replacing the ORM entirely with raw SQL, anyway it is usually never the case. Why would you build a complex app only to tear it appart with going back to raw SQL ? i'm not talking about SQLAlchemy but often the main problem with ORM is performance. Especially when a orm has its own query language on top of the SQL language ( Like Hibernate or Doctrine ). A good ORM imho is what you described , something very light but still usefull enough so one doesnt have to do data transformation from rows to objects. How does SQLAchemy fetch related objects ? is it is lazy ? or does it fetch everything when doing a join query for instance. Anyway thank you for your great work with SQLAlchemy.