For most of the tests, we expect that an ORM or something ORM-like is used to work with the database. For example, the Ruby tests use ActiveRecord and many of the Java tests use Hibernate. We believe the use of an ORM to be conventional for most production sites.

The "raw" suffix indicates that an ORM is not used. This can give you an idea of the cost of using an ORM (or, in some cases, the cost of having more framework code in general).

The "servlet-raw" test uses raw JDBC to connect to and query the database. The "php-raw" test uses PHP's raw MySQL connectivity and no ORM. The "php" test with no "raw" suffix is using PHP ActiveRecord.