See all the steps involved to build a fully functional data mapper with object-oriented PHP5 using the power and simplicity of the Standard PHP Library. Based on the early development of a new PHP DataMapper project Vance Lucas started a few months ago as the Model layer for an MVC framework.

2. “ A layer of mappers that moves data between objects and a database while keeping them independent of each other and the mapper itself” Martin Fowler, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

7. CodeIgniter DataMapper: http://stensi.com/datamapper/

16. Eager Loading Always loads relations with row Lazy Loading Loads relations only when asked