[ciapug] Fwd: O'Reilly User Group and Professional Association Program

[Eric Junker]

Carl Olsen wrote:
> I’m also interested in Frameworks, like Symfony and the Zend Framework. 
>  I’m using Symfony now, but haven’t had time to look at the Zend Framework.

As far as ORM goes, Symfony now also supports the Doctrine ORM. I was 
turned off by all the XML configuration and code generation involved 
with using Symfony and Propel. I prefer Doctrine because it is easier to 
get set up and configured. Here is a link to Symfony's comparison of 
Propel and Doctrine. 
http://trac.symfony-project.org/wiki/ComparingPropelAndDoctrine

If you are looking for a lightweight ORM you could use something like 
CoughPHP http://coughphp.com/ or the Zend Framework offers Zend_Db_Table 
which really isn't an ORM but implements the Table Data Gateway pattern 
which is similar to the Active Record pattern that many ORMs use.

I would suggest taking a look at Zend Framework. You may find it lacking 
in the model/ORM area but there are many tutorials on how to use 
Doctrine with Zend Framework to provide a more full featured Model 
layer. I've recently been playing with the Dojo widgets that are a part 
of the Dojo JavaScript framework that are integrated into Zend Framework.

Unrelated to this I thought I would mention that everybody should check 
out stackoverflow.com. If you haven't heard of it yet, it is a 
programming Q&A site started by Jeff Atwood of the codinghorror.com blog 
and Joel Spolsky from the joelonsoftware.com blog. I've had good luck 
with getting answers to questions and also had fun answering other 
questions.

Eric