This is the website of the Propel PHP project. Propel is an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) framework for PHP5. It allows you to access your database using a set of objects, providing a simple API for storing and retrieving data.
Propel allows you, the web application developer, to work with databases in the same way you work with other classes and objects in PHP.
* You don't have to worry about database connections or writing SQL -- unless you want to.
* You never have to worry about escaping data or type-casting results.
* You define your database in a simple XML format (or tell Propel to build it from an existing database) and Propel will create database initialization files for your database and will generate static classes and objects that provide an OO interface to your database. (It can generate other useful things based on the datamodel too!)
* Propel builds classes which are aware of the structure of your database so there's no performance lost to initialization or to on-the-fly database metadata queries.
Most web application database tasks are really simple -- and with Propel they'll actually feel as simple as they are. Finally, extensibility is at the heart of Propel's design; we expect you to want to change and customize things.