I like ORMs but in my experience the best approach is to use a hybrid of ORM, views and sprocs. Ideally each sproc will return the results of querying a view o

I like ORMs but in my experience the best approach is to use a hybrid of ORM, views and sprocs. Ideally each sproc will return the results of querying a view or at a minimum the identical columns, then the views become 1st class entities in your ORM like anything else (except for updatable views which I shy away from). So personally I vow never to write an insert, update or delete again, but I am certainly happy to write queries and tune them if necessary. The one thing that trumps nosql / denormalisation in my opinion is materialised views. Materialised views are a thing of beauty that allow for the design integrity of normalized data and the performance of denormalised data. It seems most people don't use them / understand them because they use b-grade free database engines. You never stop hearing people complain about nulls,types/precedence and joins in SQL, but seriously it isn't that hard to learn. These are the main things that people complain about and regurgitate endlessly, so a little effort would be a big reward.