Can anyone clue me in on how this is helpful (not slagging, just generally curious). Like I don't see how this:

  create_view :active_patients do |view|
    view.select 'p.patient_id as id' ,'p.id as visit_id'  
    view.from 'patients as p'  
    view.join 'left join demographics d on d.visit_id=v.id'
    view.conditions 'p.status'=>'active','p.name' => 'John' #or "p.status='active' and p.name='John'"
  end

is easier than:

  create or replace view patient.active_patients as
  select p.patient_id as id,  p.id as visit_id
  from patients p
  left join demographics d on d.visit_id=v.id
  where p.status='active' and p.name = 'John';

I don't use rails, and the ORM we use generates in reverse, so we define our database using SQL and then generate the model layer from that. We use a lot of views, stored procs and postgresql features such as table inheritance, which no ORM seems to handle going the forward route.

Is it because you can't do straight SQL in rail's migration stuff?

Thanks.