[ykler]

I don't want a full-fledged ORM, and I sort of like SQL, but just normalizing nested objects to put them in the database and then unnormalizing them on the way out is really annoying to do in raw SQL in my experience. Every time you want to store a new object in the database, it feels like so much effort to write a bunch of boilerplate functions. Or do you have a solution to this?

[toast0]

I enjoy using SQL in an environment with first class hash/map/ whatevers; I don't like to build up an object. SELECT X, Y, Z from .... gets you an array of things with X, Y, and Z keys.

Turing your hash into parameters for an insert isn't going to be great fun, although perl hash slices aren't bad. I think I've seen something about named SQL variables instead of just ?, that might be usable with a hash directly?

[stuartaxelowen]

If you're using python, you can use named tuples for everything. It's really nice! Check out the psycopg2 namedtuple connection.

[ykler]

I just glanced at this, and maybe I don't understand, but it sounds like psycopg2 namedtuples only work on one table at a time; is this right?

[stuartaxelowen]

The namedtuple is just a datastructure interface with psycopg2. For instance, you could write an arbitrary query "SELECT left.x AS cats, right.created_at FROM left JOIN right ON etc" and you'd get namedtuples with attrs `cats` and `created_at`. Similarly, you can insert namedtuples just like rows, since they are iterables, or as namedparameters with the nt._asdict() method. It's great!