It uses a DTO style mapping system and central factory EntityManager making unit testing a breeze. Model definitions let you map database primitives directly from the models. It will automagically build you the table on first use and it's capable of moving data from one engine to another engine on the fly. Migrations are built in and it's capable of generating migrations directly from changes to a model. It's smart about SQL multi saves (transactions), joins for relationships, views, and a bunch of other database features that most ORMs don't even bother to be even aware of let alone implement. It's basically an enterprise level ORM. Functionally it works like ActiveRecord but under the hood it's very different.