Sequel: When ActiveRecord is not enough

As Rails developers, using ActiveRecord as our database library is a given. As our application grows, we start noticing that some of our new requirements aren't exactly supported by the ActiveRecord API. So, we pull up our sleeves and write that raw SQL snippet, re-create some queries without models to get that extra performance gain, or work around that bug in the library, and move on. But gaining this technical debt isn't necessary if you're using a library that supports your advanced use cases. Enter Sequel, an alternative ORM for Ruby. In this talk we will show some advantages that Sequel has over Active Record, covering topics like the query API, building SQL expressions (Arel), connection pools, immutability and more.