Doesn't that just push the reflection out to the class builder? It's no longer run-time for the application using the generated ORM, but the generator still benefits from reflection in
its run-time. Or am I missing the point?
Incidentally, I have used Class::DBI::Loader in the past to generate the ORM classes once, and then used the resulting in-memory model to write out static .pm files. I think that's both an illustration of your off-line class generator, but also of how CDBI::Loader benefits from reflection to build its model -- if it does, in fact. I can't vouch for that, to be honest, because I haven't looked at that module in ages. It certainly seems like it would in my mind.