[wanorris]

How can you build an application without data structures anyway? If you ever load data from a database, it's loaded into a data structure of some kind.

Of course, if you're using a bunch of elaborate ORM stuff, I suppose it might build your data structures without you ever really seeing them. Is that what you meant?

[watfiv]

Basically: more precisely, that modern database APIs (not just ORMs) can hide much of the complexity of using an sql database, so that it seems neither "elaborate" nor "a higher order of magnitude" more complex to the programmer to build, test or debug. And since modern database layers often give you tools to help build data structures, it might seem simpler to use those tools than to build something without them.