I’m having a conceptual crisis.

Although it might be a bit early to be dealing with this (at least according to my project plan, which after changing last night puts me back on schedule – but only just), but I’ve started to work on the models and tables I need for the project.

I’m using CakePHP as my development framework, which uses the OOP patten of MVC. What this means, from a practical point of view, is that I need to think of all my data as models rather than database tables. It shouldn’t be too hard to make the switch – but apparently it is! I’m used to thinking about data in tables, and how the tables relate to one another – and although models work in a similar way – they don’t! And to make things worse – once I have finished designing the models, I then still need to go back and start thinking about the tables the models required due to Cake’s Bake feature (which automates the generation of the classes used within your application) using the tables in the database to build the models.

ARGH!!!!

But wait, there’s more. (more…)