[JohnBooty]

I've used this pattern and I like it a lot (for the reasons you say) but I find I still spent way too much time on really mundane stuff... particularly table<-->object mapping if the database table has a lot of columns.

My current approach is:

1. I basically judge ORMs on how easily they allow me to use custom SQL. (ActiveRecord makes this pretty tolerable with find_by_sql) 2. Let the ORM handle as much CRUD and table<-->object mapping as possible 3. If I have complex SQL, I try to wrap it in an appropriate database object (view, sproc, function).