Propel is an object persistence layer for PHP5
based on Apache Torque. In practical terms, it
allows you to use objects instead of SQL to read
and write rows in your database tables. It
provides a generator that creates SQL definition
files and PHP classes for your datamodel, and a
runtime engine that transparently handles object
persistence and retrieval. It makes it easy to
customize generated classes; additionally, the use
of XML, PHP classes, and the Phing build tool make
it easy to integrate Propel with an existing
application framework.