[rch]

I've found that 'sqlalchemy.sql.text' works well for complex queries that don't need to be built up incrementally, and the fluent sql interface is great otherwise. Also, reflection can be really useful when working with existing databases, and for maintenance scripts that might not need to be tied directly to your model.

SQLAlchemy provides more than just the ORM... I actually wish the docs were structured differently to better emphasize that in search results, etc.