[drdaeman]

Yes, I know and use it, but SQLAlchemy is not SQL. It's completely another (although, SQL-inspired and compiled-to-SQL) language, which rises learning barriers. I find myself frequently thinking SQL then mentally transforming the queries to SQLAlchemy syntax, which is somehow pointless activity, considering the fact computers excel at transforming formal languages.

I believe, If someone'll take an SQL SELECT statements parser and create a library that'd generate SQLAlchemy query/statement object from them, such library will make development more productive.

[zzzeek]

this is more or less what HQL does (http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.3/reference/en-US/html...). However the huge advantage to composing SQL as an actual object construct is that you get reusable constructs which serve as components to composing a larger structure. String-based SQL OTOH means you're going to be concatenating strings together which is error-prone, verbose, and even hazardous from a security point of view as it discourages the usage of bound parameters.