Thanks for your reply, Mark. I'd just chime in by agreeing that it is hard to build an ORM...but since this wheel has already been invented..and reinvented, it's hard to justify why a new ORM would need to be built for Cake. There are already several mature PHP-based ORM systems (Doctrine and Propel leading the pack) that are ripe for straightforward integration into larger systems.
So, rather than a backwards-compatibility-killing overhaul of Cake's model system, perhaps a better approach would be to start by offering Cake developers a choice by allowing the data access layer to be toggled between returning the traditional arrays and returning objects via an existing ORM that has been plugged in. Maybe this toggle could even be set application- or controller-wide via the configuration system, or at run time for more granular control. Doctrine offers this toggle out of the box, for example. This way, developers have a choice to migrate all, some, or none of an existing application to an object oriented model system. Maybe there's something about Cake's design that would make even this kind of architecture unfeasibly difficult, but based on my (admittedly rusty) understanding of Cake's internals, it shouldn't be too bad. Core system components could transparently continue to use the array access method as long as they needed to, and userland code could break free of arrays if it wanted to. Having been away for a few years, I'm actually a bit amazed (and disappointed) that the 2.0 release isn't being used as an opportunity to bring Cake more fully into the world of OOP. I'm not one to complain about open source software though...I have much to be thankful for. -SS -- Our newest site for the community: CakePHP Video Tutorials http://tv.cakephp.org Check out the new CakePHP Questions site http://ask.cakephp.org and help others with their CakePHP related questions. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cake-php+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php
