Yeah. If you have objects, skip the relational mapping and just use an object graph database.

or if you have relations, skip the object mapping and treat the data as lower level structures.

No. Don't do that.

The data in your computer program needs to be in a format that's easy for your program to use.

set and lists and dicts and raw values are pretty damn easy. Especially if you're programming functionally etc.

(Different strokes for different folks.)