[chanks]

That is, indeed, what Sequel does. You can query the database object directly (for example, `DB[:posts].where{comments_count > 5}.exclude(poster_name: "Bob").order(:comments_count.desc).limit(10).all`) and get back an array of hashes.

Sequel's model layer is also faster than ActiveRecord's, because much of the additional functionality that ActiveRecord piles onto all records (dirty tracking, single table inheritance, etc.) are available in Sequel via a plugin system. You can enable the plugins you want to use and not pay the overhead of all the others. You can even enable specific plugins for only the models where you'll actually want to use them.

It also has a lot less magic (no association proxies, unless you enable the plugin for them :)), ridiculously customizable (many more options for associations, custom eager loading logic, and so on), and has an implementation of its Postgres adapter written in C for performance.

Highly, highly recommended.

Edit: Oh, and an issue tracker that is almost always at zero, with a very fast response time. As someone who has contributed a patch to ActiveRecord, I can't tell you how nice that is.

[sanderjd]

Yeah, that does sound like exactly what I want. Still has the "conventions" problem I mentioned, but maybe worth it, and common enough that it isn't that big a deal.

To your edit: Ha, I have a PR against arel that is similarly neglected[0]. Maybe an advantage of using a less popular library is that the maintainers aren't so overwhelmed that things get lost in the shuffle!

[0]: https://github.com/rails/arel/pull/320