Exploring my thoughts about O/R mapping....[Philosophy]

My feelings towards O/R mapping currently lack substance, and I plan to try again before truly discarding the concept, but first maybe I can start by exploring my feelings about O/R and object persistance techniques;

What do I believe?

• Applications, Objects, and Data Access should be relatively loosely-coupled and fully encapsulated within their layers.
• An Entity should not be responsible for its own persistance.
• XML is an excellent technology for expressing a contract between an object and it's persistance medium.
• Application development should be a hollistic effort not bound too tightly to its Objects, Data, or any other single attribute.
• Development tools and techniques should not vary greatly between small-scale and enterprise-scale applications.

There are many other thoughts that affect my feelings, and these do not neccessarily preclude the use of O/R mapping, but you can start to see my mental conflict over such an approach...

Are these beliefs legitimate?  Maybe, maybe not....