When you want to work with a relational database in Python, or most any other programming language, it’s common to write database queries “by hand,” using the SQL syntax supported by most databases.
This approach has its downsides, however. Hand-authored SQL queries can be clumsy to use, since databases and software applications tend to live in separate conceptual worlds. It’s hard to model how your app and your data work together.
Another approach is to use a library called an ORM, or object-relational mapping tool. ORMs let you describe how your database works through your application’s code—what tables look like, how queries work, and how to maintain the database across its lifetime. The ORM handles all the heavy lifting for your database, and you can concentrate on how your application uses the data.
