Data objects

So, what's so great about them? I want a good reason to care for them. As far as I could see, they are an OO maniac approach to make everything OO, but I weren't given a reason why this is better than writing the SQL directly (assuming you dont' care about database compatibility) and handling lists with the results.

In particular, data objects provide a good database abstraction layer, but my main concern with them is how are you going to do that huge complex select with three JOINs and WHERE, GROUP BY and HAVING. I get the feeling you can't do complex queries with them, and whatever SQL the system generates won't be as efficient as your hand-crafted, equally as productive one; and you can't benefit from database functions like IF or GROUPCONCAT.

So I want to know if data objects have a good thing to them which I should care for, or if they are just more OO enterprise wankery for certificated losers who think SQL is hard to write.

You're right; if you need to optimize a large query you're going to have to get your hands dirty and write some SQL. However that doesn't mean you should be hand coding SQL for everything. Let the language handle the day to day chores, your time is too valuable.