ORMs, why should I care?
Most PHP developers are followers of the KISS principle: keep it simple stupid! Not a bad idea at all. The result is that most PHP applications are easy to setup and maintain, much to the contrary of the average Java web application. ORM, object relational mapper, do not seem to fit this mantra well. Worse yet they carry with them the stigmata of being associated with Java. The PHP world was therefore much more receptive of the more lightweight ActiveRecord approach that was popularized with Ruby on Rails. However, the presenter of this talk, far from a Java lover, will try to pitch one of the more feature rich ORM for PHP to the audience. If that is not darin enough, it should be noted that the ORM that will be the focus of the talk is Doctrine, which has been heavily inspired by Java's most popular ORM Hibernate. After an introduction and several examples of very high level features of Doctrine, the audience will hopefully help round off this talk with a lively discussion at the end.