Relational databases - there has to be more right?

Question

I really enjoy database design and the whole concept of managing data semantically and all the logic that comes with it.

My knowledge level when it comes to databases is

Answer 1

It depends on what you want to do with your databases, how does your data look, what are your work flows, how many servers, clients and databases you have to work with ...

So let's pretend that you, like me, have to deal with several databases, not to big (< 100 GB each) and you have many clients with many different needs that make you develop many custom solutions, like producing custom reports or exports. That makes you more of a programmer than a DBA. And what you need is productivity, before performance.

The best solution I came up with, in that situation, is getting rid of SQL, as much as possible. You can achieve that by using some kind of ORM, either home made or existing ones, and thus trading SQL scripting for object programming. Doing that I do in minutes what would takes hours with SQL.