You can have your cake and eat it!

Cakephp is based upon the MVC programming design pattern which is an abbreviation for(Model View Controller). Basically speaking you can create a model(database schema) and a Controller is reponsible for accessing the data from the model and passing it on to the View.

Cakephp takes all the work out of creating database connections and writing multiple queries to access the data. The data is retrieved by using associations between models. So long as these associations between tables have been created correctly in the model you can quickly write applications in PHP/MySQL with ease.

Does it cost a lot

It's Free and is available to download from www.cakephp.org. The project is now really mature and is currently on version 1.3 stable release. There is a large community based around the project and many plugins and code available to quickly get you up and running.

Whay should we use it

CakePHP is a RAD(Rapid Application Development) tool.It takes away many of the tedious tasks when writing web applications such as queries and forms etc and lets the programmer concentrate on the application. It is flexible and scalable so is suited to many large scale web based applications. We will be very happy to discus any projects you have in mind and provide you with links to some demo sites so you can see cakePHP in action.