This document provides an introduction and overview of Doctrine 2. Some key points:
- Doctrine 2 has been completely rewritten for PHP 5.3, with a new codebase and architecture.
- It has separate packages for the Common code, Database Abstraction Layer (DBAL), and Object-Relational Mapper (ORM).
- Entities no longer need to extend a base class and the domain model is defined purely with PHP objects.
- Initial performance tests show Doctrine 2 is significantly faster than Doctrine 1 at common tasks like hydrating thousands of records.
- The goal was to remove "magic" from Doctrine 1 to make it more explicit and