I disagree. Query composing is probably 70% of an ORM framework. Rest are schema generation, serialization and validation. All of which can live outside the ORM.
Mapping to actual objects. Type mapping. Merging requests over relationships. Transaction integration. Dealing with dirty markers and writebacks. All of those along with validation depend on the database and object formats. Those are why ORMs exist in the first place.
If you take them out, what you have left is a repository pattern with some struct mapping helpers only. Which is fine if you want that, but you'd miss the "R" and the "O".
