Alex de Azevedo is an undergraduate student in computer science in Brazil. He is very talented in database technologies, ORM and implementation issues related to multi-database development. Alex has used Joomla! to develop Web sites but has not yet developed using Joomla!'s application architecture. He is eager to put six years of PHP development experience to use with the new Joomla! framework, to start an open source development career and to be a part of the Google Summer of Code program.

Mentor: Anthony Ferrara is the team lead of the Joomla! Bug Squad, and a member of the Joomla! Developer and Joomla! Extension Directory teams. He started with Mambo in 2005 and has continued with Joomla! providing the community with JoomlaPerformance, caching extensions, and his assistance. Professionally, Anthony is a PHP developer and MySQL DBA. He is a fire department volunteer, a pilot, and one who loves learning, with interests in math, physics, programming, music, good beer, and life.

I suggest a total revamp of Joomla database manipulation. The main goal of this project will be the possibility of make joomla! support a large scale of databases. The initial idea includes the use of a ORM like Propel or Doctrine ( in my opinion the best PHP Database ORMs available actually ). The possibility of reduce code lines, abstract database queries will also contribute to a fast development and coding standards between Joomla! programmers. This multiple database support will be also be a good stuff for people who have more than one database option on shared hostings or just want to improve the performance of their joomla! website choosing a faster database system. Power of decision. These ORMs have a powerful and intuitive query abstraction that can help programmers to reduce code line, improve coding standards and take easy work with any kind of database, without warn with the query syntax.

The main problem of this idea, like reported by mentor Anthony Ferrara, is the compatibility of this new feature with PHP4. Actually Propel and Doctrine both require PHP 5.2.x+, and this idea will be unusable today, because maintain the PHP4 support is still a fact in Joomla Development Really. The idea of create a new ORM system also can be a good option or solution to this compatibility issue and complety possible to be done, in my reality.

Theses changes for Joomla! will also be a big step to the next Joomla! programmers that will only have to know how to develop using one of these ORM or own suggestion, improving code quality, standard and consequently development speed.

My experiences with Joomla?! Actually I’m just a common user of Joomla, that saw in this idea a new possibility to expand Joomla! idea on web and get more users with different hosting platforms.