[mwsherman]

“Wrong but works correctly” is a pretty novel definition of wrong.

The argument you are making is that this particular ORM needs optimizations. Which is true! The point stands that the semantics of the two expressions is different, and thus should do different things. The point also stands that the user is mixing metaphors.

If the ORM can be informed of the guarantee that the FK constraint provides, and optimize accordingly, that’s good too. But this doesn’t tell us much about ORMs, except that they can be improved.

Also, a database that has two different query plans for queries that are logically equivalent…needs improvement.