Is there a good comparison of Doctrine vs Propel?

Question

I've seen plenty of comparisons of Doctrine vs Propel, but none of them has actually convinced me to choose Doctrine over Propel.

I've been using Propel for a while now and almost every comparison I read states that Propel is not well documented as the first problem and I've read Propel's docs and they're quite well. Also, most of comparisons are dated, (using Propel 1.5+).

Does anyone knows of a highly convincing post in a blog where I can see test results and some actual differences?

Palingenesis

here is one from 2008: redotheweb.com/2008/07/08/… – Sieracki

Have you considered RedBean? redbeanphp.com – Neutrality

Answer 1

I suspect you were around when I asked my question yesterday on freenode?

Most of the time, it's not technical differences that drive people away, but the community. If it doesn't have a vibrant and active community to back it up and answer questions, no matter how much better it is, people will be driven away.

Shechem

Answer 2

I was using Propel for 1,5 years too(with Symfony 1.0). But then I got a project with Doctrine ORM. I wasn't very happy about it(because I didn't know Doctrine at all), but after few days of working with Doctrine I forgot about Propel.)) As for Propel, it took me about few weeks to be able to use it.

Here are to links from Google(they are at the top of search results):

• http://codeutopia.net/blog/2008/03/02/doctrine-vs-propel/

• http://codeutopia.net/blog/2009/05/16/doctrine-vs-propel-2009-update/.

As for me, it was enough to see advantages of Doctrine. You should simply try Doctrine(it'd be better to see real project with this ORM) and then you will understand it by yourself.

To my mind, Doctrine is much much more convenient and faster then Propel in development. And also Doctrine looks like native SQL, so it's easier to understand and debug code.

Shackle

Propel has changed a lot since the Symfony 1.0 days. The Query system introduced in Propel 1.5 improved the Criteria system drastically, while still being backwards compatible. So comparisons from even a year ago should be taken with a grain of salt, as they probably still look at the (indeed clumsy) Criteria system. – Impatient

I totally agree with you, which is why Im looking for newer comparisons. Plus, telling me that Doctrine has more bahaviours as some people did, is no good, because behaviours can be implemented – Palingenesis

Doctrine looks like native SQL? But this not an advantage. It is supposed to be the opposite. What is the meaning of ORM? – Bascom

This is all very subjective (and I expect this old question to be closed) but, for Propel: it uses generated classes, and so can expect to be faster than Doctrine, and it doesn't use annotations at all (code in comments - eek!). To be fair to Doctrine, whilst it uses them by default, they are apparently not mandatory. At the time of writing though, Doctrine's current development is rather busier than Propel's. – Plusch