In my experience, every time we tried to replace SQL with something else (last time it was Zend Framework with its SQL request builder), the entire project code

In my experience, every time we tried to replace SQL with something else (last time it was Zend Framework with its SQL request builder), the entire project code base turned into a heap of mysteries... Since then, in every project, no matter how complex or simple it is, we try to stay with plain old SQL queries.