

Is the ActiveRecord pattern really so bad? - Jaigus

I'm using the sqlalchemy expression language for a project, and feel the data-mapper pattern implemented in the orm wouldn't be a good fit for my project since the classes are pretty much isomorphic to the database's tables.<p>I've spoken to and read from people that resent ActiveRecord because it violates SRP, and states it doesn't scale well. Aside from making testing a bit more difficult and not strictly abiding by the OO principles, what are some serious disadvantages to the ActiveRecord approach? It seems relatively pervasive(I've seen it used in Amazon's new persistence solution and Google AppEngine).<p>I've been considering a dao/gateway pattern approach, but it just seems silly to create what feels like a layer of fluff for what AR makes very simple, intuitive, and feels more natural to code. I'd really appreciate some opinions on this, thanks.
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stevenwei
Honesty, the ActiveRecord approach is fine for the vast majority of use cases
- just consider the number of sites built on Rail's ActiveRecord or PHP's
Doctrine. This is one case where getting things done is more important than
theorist purity, IMO.

Have you looked into SQLAlchemy's declarative extension?

