Zend Db (standard or table gateway) vs Doctrine in Zend 2 - Pros/Cons

Question

Zend DB (standard way or table gateway) vs Doctrine in Zend 2. Some might say it’s apple vs orange comparison but I would say since they are substitutes (we use one between two) so it can be compared (as requirements are not always crystal clear).

When I started Zend 2 since documentation, books, tutorials were based on Zend DB or Table Gateway, I used it but I was not happy with ways when we have to work on 2, 3 or more tables joins (multiple table gateway adapters) so I switched to Doctrine ORM (also reading so many saying “doctrine is good for large project”). I was already using doctrine in symfony projects so was not difficult but I also didn’t like doctrine in instance like complex joins between entities (extra works), especially slowness and extra memory compared to Zend DB.

Now I am really confused what should I do? So what do you guys suggest?

From my analysis:

Table Gateway

Pros

• Lightweight (keep things simple)
• Native to Zend (better support now and for future updates)
• More documentation-books
• Better community or user support (as it is what many are working on)
• Close of database-tables (I am good in SQL. So feel good)
• More flexible
• Easier to use other doctrine native features such as ACL

Cons:

• Table joins (more complex)
• Primitive in some context
• Handling multiple table gateway instance is difficult.

Doctrine

Pros

• More classes-loosely coupled—better control
• Brings all advantages of using ORM
• Lots of work already on doctrine itself (tutorials-documentations) which works most of the time
• Less reliance on database
• Caching (but also possible with Zend DB Table Gateway)

Cons:

• More memory and slower (compared to Zend DB Table Gateway) for medium project
• Adds complexity (extra files+ configurations + its own conventions)
• Sometimes overkill for medium projects
• More work in many to many relationships between entities or complicated joins
• Extra work YAML-Schema
• Less tutorials-books-user support on Zend + Doctrine

Any others? ( for both)

So, in light of these, which one do you suggest? Working on generic CMS that I can extend.

or why Zend DB cannot/should not be used in larger projects?

I found some discussion here but not as per its pros/cons analysis.

Answer 1

I did the reverse. I removed Doctrine 2 and switch to Zend DB 2, that improves our queries by a factor of 5x, then we're able to customise some parts of Zend DB table gateway, and we gain 5x more performance on queries (almost as native).

I would say do not use Doctrine if you're gone have large datasets. And remember doctrine consumes a lot of resources.