Or even better, an ORM can be layered on top of an SQL abstraction that maps directly to what the database understands: http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/rel_1_0/co

Or even better, an ORM can be layered on top of an SQL abstraction that maps directly to what the database understands: http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/rel_1_0/core/tutorial.html http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/rel_1_0/core/tutorial.html It then becomes easy to go one level below the ORM without giving up all the nice things.