I’m using SQLAlchemy in my job, and have worked with Python for many years. Never have I seen a good case of someone using SQLAlchemy to hydrate objects from raw SQL queries. I’ll definitely admit — I have not gone out of my way to search for it. It seems that it is a common want to do this kind of 60% benefit ORM you speak of, but it’s definitely unclear to me how to pick those parts together with the daunting (and fantastic) piece SQLAlchemy is.