The OP wrote: "What I didn't mention in my post was that I did use SQLAlchemy Core to write some pretty complicated queries." What you seem to have read: "What

The OP wrote: "What I didn't mention in my post was that I did use SQLAlchemy Core to write some pretty complicated queries." What you seem to have read: "What I didn't mention in my post was that I did use SQLAlchemy Core to write some pretty complicated queries and didn't use SQLAlchemy ORM at all." It seems to me that it would be more plausible to read: "What I didn't mention in my post was that I did use SQLAlchemy Core to write some pretty complicated queries, in addition to using SQLAlchemy ORM."