No, the Rails inspired node.js framework forces an ORM on you. My advice throughout this thread has been to stick with Rails if the Rails conventions do it for you. There's certainly nothing broken with that approach. I don't think Rails is the right tool for every problem, but for the ones that it is, people will probably be better served using that, rather than re-implementing it in node.

I'm neither anti-Rails or anti-ORM. But the types of projects that actually benefit from being in node, rather than Rails generally benefit from not being tied to those conventions. If what you're doing fits the Rails pattern, that's probably a better solution than anything in node. If you're doing a project that doesn't fit that, and you need lots of customization, you're probably better off doing that from scratch (or with a minimal un-opinionated framework).

I think both have their places. It really depends on the project.