@rsoesemann@ImJohnMDaniel@ca_peterson Also, it should be noted that DMLManager, as it stands today, is 'smart' in that it only raises an Exception if you UPDATE a field value that you don't have FLS Edit access to. It won't raise an exception if you do an Update on an SObject and you haven't modified the field.
@rsoesemann@ImJohnMDaniel@ca_peterson Yes, DMLManager will be retrofitted to use User Mode once it's GA. Right now it's Beta so ISVs can't package any solutions that rely upon it -- so hang in there for another release :-P
@ca_peterson SQL doesn't allow anything to equal NULL .. so you have to use IS NULL if you really want to test for NULL. It would obviously be a breaking change to SOQL but probably one that could be versioned