ActiveRecord is an ORM that doesn't feel like an ORM.  The fact that
things like #update_attribute and #find_by_sql exist are part of the
reason that I like ActiveRecord.  It's a light wrapper around my
database that lets me get down and dirty with SQL if need to (which
happens quite a bit).

Maybe I'm too pragmatic, but I definitely prefer writing one line of
code to writing 3.

David Vallner wrote:
> > mouvement = Mouvement.find(params[:id])
> > mouvement.statut = :traite
> > mouvement.save!
>
> I like this variant better. The whole point of ActiveRecord is that you
> handle the database tables like objects, and the use of
> #update_attribute makes the code read more like SQL generator calls
> instead of ORM use. YMMV.