In order to connect to a database through Doctrine, you have to create a valid DSN - data source name. Doctrine supports both PEAR DB/MDB2 like data source names as well as PDO style data source names. The following section deals with PEAR like data source names. If you need more info about the PDO-style data source names see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.PDO-construct.php. The DSN consists in the following parts: phptype Database backend used in PHP (i.e. mysql , pgsql etc.) dbsyntax Database used with regards to SQL syntax etc. protocol Communication protocol to use ( i.e. tcp, unix etc.) hostspec Host specification (hostname[:port]) database Database to use on the DBMS server username User name for login password Password for login proto_opts Maybe used with protocol option option: Additional connection options in URI query string format. options get separated by &. The Following table shows a non complete list of options: name Some backends support setting the client charset. new_link Some RDBMS do not create new connections when connecting to the same host multiple times. This option will attempt to force a new connection The DSN can either be provided as an associative array or as a string. The string format of the supplied DSN is in its fullest form: phptype(dbsyntax)://username:password@protocol+hostspec/database?option=value Most variations are allowed: phptype://username:password@protocol+hostspec:110//usr/db_file.db phptype://username:password@hostspec/database phptype://username:password@hostspec phptype://username@hostspec phptype://hostspec/database phptype://hostspec phptype:///database phptype:///database?option=value&anotheroption=anothervalue phptype(dbsyntax) phptype The currently supported database backends are: fbsql -> FrontBase? ibase -> InterBase? / Firebird (requires PHP 5) mssql -> Microsoft SQL Server (NOT for Sybase. Compile PHP --with-mssql) mysql -> MySQL? mysqli -> MySQL? (supports new authentication protocol) (requires PHP 5) oci8 -> Oracle 7/8/9/10 pgsql -> PostgreSQL? querysim -> QuerySim? sqlite -> SQLite 2 A second DSN format is supported phptype(syntax)://user:pass@protocol(proto_opts)/database If your database, option values, username or password contain characters used to delineate DSN parts, you can escape them via URI hex encodings: : = %3a / = %2f @ = %40 + = %2b ( = %28 ) = %29 ? = %3f = = %3d & = %26 Please note, that some features may be not supported by all database backends. mysql://user@unix(/path/to/socket)/pear pgsql://user:pass@tcp(localhost:5555)/pear sqlite:////full/unix/path/to/file.db?mode=0666 sqlite:///c:/full/windows/path/to/file.db?mode=0666 mysqli://user:pass@localhost/pear?key=client-key.pem&cert=client-cert.pem