For the record, I revised the first post from "ORM" to "database abstraction layer". A number of the more intelligent counter-points to that were correct; stating that one should only use an ORM was unintentionally too domain-specific.
I think that for web applications, ORM is the right word. In fact, for almost anything that uses a database, an ORM is warranted. This is from someone who's done it both ways several times, including writing my own ORM a couple of times both as a side-project and as part of a project that "didn't need ORM".
