at the moment im integrating ORM (doctrine) into a MVC framework (codeigniter).
then it hit me that this was the obvious way of setting up a MVC:
the controller calls the models that are representing database tables.
look at this picture:
then i wondered, how can a MVC without ORM be real MVC? cause then the models are not real objects, rather aggregations of different functions that perform CRUD, then returning the result to the controller. and there is no need for a state (object properties) i guess so the functions would be all static?
correct me if im wrong on this one.
i guess a lot of people are using models without ORM. please share your thoughts. how do your models look like?
MVC is a general purpose UI pattern originally conceived for OO languages (I believe Smalltalk was the first).
If you don’t have a relational database as a back end (say, a binary serialized file format) you have no need of an ORM layer.
The two are quite distinct and can exist without each other.