[DangitBobby]

What should I call a program that generates SQL, executes it, and stores the result in a tuple, object, or whatever data structure in the programming language that I'm using? Does it magically stop being an ORM the second I use a tuple instead of a class instance, or is it now an ORM plus another nameless type of program? Are tuples also objects?

[randomdata]

Whatever you want. It's your life.

Traditionally, though, SQL generation was known as query building. The query was executed via database engine or database driver, depending on the particulars. ORM, as the name originally implied, was the step that converted the relations into structured objects (and vice versa). So, yes, technically if you maintain your data as tuples end to end you are not utilizing ORM. Lastly, there once was what was known as the active record pattern that tried to combine all of these distinct features into some kind of unified feature set.

But we're in a new age. Tradition has gone out the window. Computing terms have no consistency to speak of, and not just when it comes to databases. Indeed, most people will call any kind of database-related code ORM these days. It's just funny that ORM no longer means object-relational mapping.

[marcus_holmes]

I think the core thing that ORMs do is create a 1:1 mapping between the data structures in the database (that are, or should be, optimised for storage) and the data structures in the application (that are, or should be, optimised for the application business logic).

ORMs create this false equivalence (and in this sense, so does Django's admin interface despite using tuples instead of classes). I can see the sense of this, vaguely, for an admin interface, but it's still a false equivalence.

[freedomben]

I agree with you, but I do think there's a little fuzziness between full-blown ORM and a tuple-populating query builder in some cases. For example Ecto, which can have understanding of the table schema and populate a struct with the data. It's just a struct though, not an object. There's no functions or methods on it, it's basically just a tuple with a little more organization.

[randomdata]

> It's just a struct though, not an object. There's no functions or methods on it

Object-relational mapping was originally coined in the Smalltalk world, so objects were in front of mind, but it was really about type conversion. I am not sure that functions or methods are significant. It may be reasonable to say that a struct is an object, for all intents and purposes.

A pendant might say that what flimsy definition Kay did give for object-oriented programming was just a laundry list of Smalltalk features, meaning that Smalltalk is (probably) the only object-oriented language out there, and therefore ORM can only exist within the Smalltalk ecosystem. But I'm not sure tradition ever latched onto that, perhaps in large part because Kay didn't do a good job of articulating himself.

[freedomben]

Thanks for the thoughts, that's a good point. It certainly makes sense that the "object" merely needs typed properties to qualify.