Love this metaphor. I've long felt that thin layers between SQL and applications are superior to ORMs. MyBatis and jOOQ are great examples of this, as is Python

Love this metaphor. I've long felt that thin layers between SQL and applications are superior to ORMs. MyBatis and jOOQ are great examples of this, as is Python's basic dbapi (PEP 249). But Uncle Bob hits the most important point here, that the application is not the data. Yes, you need some kind of gateway to put data over there or to fetch data from over there, but that interface should not be what drives your application. If you practice Domain Driven Design (DDD) then your application is composed of objects that represent the real world activities that the application engages in. The data is incidental. I still think it pays off to carefully structure your data in your RDBMS or NoSQL datastore because it is likely to be SHARED with many applications, but that structuring is a separate thing from the applications which use and update the data.