Object Relational Mapping can be helpful when dealing with larger codebases/complex databases for simply creating a more programmatic way of interacting with your data.

I can't say it is always worth it, nor does it always make things simpler, but it can help.

[–] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

I don't have a lot of experience with projects that use ORMs, but from what I've seen it's usually not worth it. They tend to make developers lazy and create things where every query fetches half the database when they only need one or two columns from a single row.

[–] red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 47 minutes ago

Yeah. Unless your data model is dead simple, you will end up not only needing to know this additional framework, but also how databases and SQL work to unfuck the inevitable problems.

[–] red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 47 minutes ago

Yeah. Unless your data model is dead simple, you will end up not only needing to know this additional framework, but also how databases and SQL work to unfuck the inevitable problems.

[–] bort@sopuli.xyz 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

the problem with ORM is that some people go all in on it and ignore pure SQL completely.

In reality ORM only works well for somewhat simple queries and structures, but at some times you will have to write your own queries in SQL. But then you have some bonus complexity, that comes from 2 different things filling the same niche. It's still worth it, but there is no free cake.

[–] elkien@lemmy.today 2 points 3 hours ago

I've always seen as that as a scapehatch for one of the most typical issues with ORMs, like the the N+1 problem, but I never fully bought it as a real solution.

Mainly because in large projects this gets abused (turns out none or little of the SQL has a companion test) and one of the most oversold benefits of ORMs (the possibility of "easily" refactor the model) goes away.

Since SQL is code and should be tested like any other code, I rather ditch the whole ORM thing and go SQL from the beginning. It may be annoying for simple queries but induces better habits.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 28 minutes ago

I used to use ORMs because they made switching between local dev DBs ( like SQLLite, or Postgres) and production DBs usually painless. Especially for Ruby/Sinatra/Rails since we were writing the model queries in another abstraction. It meant we didn’t have to think as much about joins and all that stuff. Until the performance went to shit and you had to work out why.