MVC web development without ORM is definitely not fun. Being able to stay within the object paradigm when working with data keeps development momentum flowing.

MVC web development without ORM is definitely not fun. Being able to stay within the object paradigm when working with data keeps development momentum flowing. Stopping to write basic data access methods was always very annoying. I think the choice comes down to your optimization needs -- if ORM with caching is too slow, you could work backwards and create custom queries where needed.