[cloogshicer]

> Most ORMs give a way to integrate nicely with SQL if you need to reach down to that layer and still use the rest of the ORM features.

Agreed, that's a good thing, in my experience.

> Almost all of the time, the trade off is entirely worth it even if that gets you locked into that solution.

I wish this would match my experience.

[wvenable]

What's funny is that ORMs giving you directly access to SQL is a leaky part of the abstraction but in this case that's good!

I think being locked into a some abstraction is so common place that you don't even consider it being a thing until you have a problem with it. Look at your examples: compilers, libraries, frameworks, etc. As an example, is anyone truly upset that coding in Python locks you into the Python ecosystem? Yet, I've used libraries/frameworks that didn't win the war of popularity and I'm still unfortunately committed. I think there's a bias at play in how we look at these things.