I'm not sure I'd consider query-builders to be ORMs. You do inevitably have a mapping from query resultset to list<obj>, so it does meet the name itself, but there's clearly a very large difference between "Hibernate" and query-builder, and if you don't want to use ORM to be the differentiating term calling out Hibernate and friends specifically, then let me know what you do wish to use. But as far as I know, colloquially and commonly, ORM refers to the former -- not the general act of having any mapping at all.