Would Reddit be a good example of this, where they use a relational database as a key/value store, don't use an off-the-shelf ORM and still depend on the application layer for all the business rules?
I admit I have no statistics, but it's been my experience that most places choose between a highly OO model + ORM and a highly relational model without.
> it's been my experience that most places choose between a highly OO model + ORM and a highly relational model without.
My experience has always been a highly relational model, ORM or not, and business rules enforced in app layer or DB (or a mix of the two). I've always seen them as distinctly different decisions.
Personally, in the past I was always a "rules in the app layer" guy, because of the many advantages of doing in that way, but as I get older the more difficult but guaranteed correctness of implementing in the database is becoming more appealing (especially if it's not me that has to actually write the code!!)
I admit I have no statistics, but it's been my experience that most places choose between a highly OO model + ORM and a highly relational model without.