[jimbokun]

I am personally fond of:

1. query builder APIs, which can only generate valid queries, but you can control exactly what that query will be, 2. APIs that return basic data structures from the database, like maps or tuples.

Query languages like SQL are very powerful and easy to learn. And in my opinion, preferable to ORM approach of "what method calls do I need to make to trick the engine into executing the SQL I know would make this work?" ORMs add complexity and limitations that, in my opinion, are not worth the benefits.