Can anyone give me a brief explanation...
Sure.
ORM stands for "Object to Relational Mapping" where
The Object part is the one you use with your programming language ( python in this case )
The Relational part is a Relational Database Manager System ( A database that is ) there are other types of databases but the most popular is relational ( you know tables, columns, pk fk etc eg Oracle MySQL, MS-SQL )
And finally the Mapping part is where you do a bridge between your objects and your tables.
In applications where you don't use a ORM framework you do this by hand. Using an ORM framework would allow you do reduce the boilerplate needed to create the solution.
So let's say you have this object.
class Employee:
def __init__( self, name ):
self.__name = name
def getName( self ):
return self.__name
#etc.
and the table
create table employee(
name varcar(10),
-- etc
)
Using an ORM framework would allow you to map that object with a db record automagically and write something like:
emp = Employee("Ryan")
orm.save( emp )
And have the employee inserted into the DB.
Oops it was not that brief but I hope it is simple enough to catch other articles you read.