Doctrine

Doctrine is the ORM that makes PHP database work professional. Entity mapping, a proper migration system, the DBAL abstraction layer, and query building that handles complex joins without raw SQL. It's the standard for Symfony projects and the best option in the PHP ecosystem.

The migration system alone justifies its existence in existing PHP codebases. Schema versioning, diff generation, and rollback support keep database changes traceable and repeatable. For PHP projects, Doctrine is non-negotiable. The Hold position reflects PHP's position, not Doctrine's quality.