Non-SQL databases

Another solution would be to use an object-oriented database management system, which, as the name implies, is a database designed specifically for working with object-oriented values. Using an OODBMS would eliminate the need for converting data to and from its SQL form, as the data would be stored in its original object representation.

Databases such as Caché do not require manual ORM. SQL access to non-scalar values is already built in. Caché allows the developer to design any combination of OO and table structured storage within the database instead of resorting to external tool sets.

Object-oriented databases have yet to come into widespread use. One of their main limitations is that switching from an SQL DBMS to a purely object-oriented DBMS means you lose the capability to create SQL queries, a tried and tested method for retrieving ad-hoc combinations of data. For this reason, many programmers find themselves more at home with an object-SQL mapping system, even though most commercial object-oriented databases are able to process SQL queries to a limited extent. Caché has a built-in SQL parser so that interrogations on the object may be done in a straightforward SQL manner.