[ZF Developers] Table Data Gateways and Data Mappers

[DNoe]

If you have gone through the ZF Quickstart in the manual, then you
have come across the section on creating a model in the Guestbook test
app. (http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/learning.quickstart.create-
model.html) Here, they discuss using "Table Data Gateways" and "Data
Mappers" to separate class functionality dealing with database
interaction from the rest of the class. In practice, however, it
seems that many people do not use these layers.

Do you? Why or why not? I am interested in hearing what others are
doing.

DNoe

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[Ben Peeters]

Hi DNoe,

I'm using Table Data Gateways classes and Row Data Gateway classes separate from the model classes. My models also have a has-a relationship (composition) with its data sources which abstracts the data source from the model. This way the model doesn't depend on its data sources and will work always the same whatever the data source is. For example: if we have today a MySQL table storing the customer data and later we want to change this and use a webservice as the data source, then this is easy to implement by using this loosly-coupled model - data source architecture. By having this architecture, it's also possible to unit test the model without the need for a database.

Ben