You're not using a modern ORM then if you can't use manual SQL queries. And tests are not a replacement for compilation and type-safety.
Like I said, you're either using an existing ORM or just writing your own everytime, and the one you write probably won't be very good as seen by the numerous security and performance bugs that are constantly found. Also abstractions are useful. All of software development is built with abstractions and they don't suddenly become useless when it comes to databases.
I also don't see what this has to do with API clients or build steps, but there are good and bad examples of those too.
> I also don't see what this has to do with API clients
They are the same thing, a way of taking text based queries for formatted data as std:maps and shunting that away behind classes and types and interfaces.
> Like I said, you're either using an existing ORM or just writing your own everytime
Like I said, you're either using an existing ORM or just writing your own everytime, and the one you write probably won't be very good as seen by the numerous security and performance bugs that are constantly found. Also abstractions are useful. All of software development is built with abstractions and they don't suddenly become useless when it comes to databases.
I also don't see what this has to do with API clients or build steps, but there are good and bad examples of those too.