Hi
We are moving to a 90% SP model. Meaning that all data logic is going to happen in stored procedures. ORMs, at least every one that I have seen have no easy way to deal with using SPs.
Well, this is the only reason I keen harking on about the whole thing - I believe that you are incorrect and that in fact most ORM's have no problem at all with you writing your own SQL or using SPs
Rails for example is a bit tied down to using a database, but for example Catalyst is very flexible in this regard. As a simple example check CPAN for Catalyt::Model and one of the first few search entries is Catalyst::Model::You-Tube
http://search.cpan.org/~jshirley/Catalyst-Model-YouTube-0.12/lib/Catalyst/Model/YouTube.pmIf this doesn't make you strongly suspect that badly written SQL is NOT required for a successful ORM then I'm really not sure what will!
Scanning through the list we can pick out some interesting other model's such as: Catalyst::Model::JabberRPC , Catalyst::Model::XML::Feed (cool parse XML output from another source!), Catalyst::Model::EmailStore (wierd!), Catalyst::Model::SVN, Catalyst::Model::LDAP
See what I mean?All I am saying is don't overlook frameworks such as Catalyst if you have never used one before. They really do bring a *huge* bunch of functionality to your application for free. Catalyst for example has this rather neat mini-webserver built in for development - you can't imagine how useful I find this same feature in Rails that I can just grab a laptop, jump on the train and do 20 mins of development without having to sync a bunch of files and get a webserver setup on the local machine. Sure it's just small stuff, but next time you are recruiting a developer remember that your alternative was as simple as:
svn update svn://blah.com rails startOr that before you check in any code you can just run the automated test and make sure that no one broke any existing functionality... (think how much time this saves as the team gets bigger and the number of SPs get larger, or when doing major refactoring of code...)
Please just give an MVC framework a try for two days before dismissing the whole idea... Even if you don't like it I *guarantee* that you will take away one good idea that you re-use elsewhere
Ed W