Doctrine_Connection is a wrapper for database connection. It creates Doctrine_Tables and keeps track of all the created tables. Doctrine_Connection provides things that are missing from PDO like sequence support and limit/offset emulation. $sess = $manager->openConnection(Doctrine_Db::getConnection("schema://username:password@hostname/database")); // get connection state: switch($sess): case Doctrine_Connection::STATE_BUSY: // multiple open transactions break; case Doctrine_Connection::STATE_ACTIVE: // one open transaction break; case Doctrine_Connection::STATE_CLOSED: // closed state break; case Doctrine_Connection::STATE_OPEN: // open state and zero open transactions break; endswitch; // getting database handler $dbh = $sess->getDBH(); // flushing the connection $sess->flush(); // print lots of useful info about connection: print $sess;