Prisma vs raw SQL: when should developers use each approach?
Prisma is the better choice for standard CRUD operations, relationship queries, and type-safe data access where schema-generated TypeScript types prevent runtime errors. Raw SQL is preferable for complex analytical queries, database-specific features such as PostgreSQL window functions and CTEs, stored procedure calls, and performance-critical operations where Prisma's query overhead is noticeable. Most production applications use Prisma as the default, with raw SQL via prisma.$queryRaw for specific optimisation cases.
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