Don't forget that many people (and I tentatively agree with them) do not like ORMs at all (let alone homegrown halfway-products), under any circumstance:

ORMs are the Vietnam of Computer Science

It seems kind-of logical to me that programmers like ORMs, and that DBAs dislike them (even while DBAs can be programmers, and programmers may administer databases).

The problem is that when things are simple ORMs are nice but not necessary, and when things become complicated too often they cannot do what is needed.