ah thanks for the link to Hibernate, Java is not my forte, but has a normative power when it comes to terminology.

WP - which is not necessarily the best source, but links to some - says

> It provides a framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a relational database.

which is my understanding of ORMs

but

> Hibernate handles object–relational impedance mismatch problems by replacing direct, persistent database accesses with high-level object handling functions.

so let's compromise that there are two kinds of ORMs, the basic ones which fail to address the mismatch and the advanced ones.

In the end it's like quarreling if Canadians are Americans. =)

update

Or rather if C++ is C ... ?