Switching between connections in Doctrine is very easy, you just call Doctrine_Manager::setCurrentConnection() method. You can access the connection by calling Doctrine_Manager::getConnection() or Doctrine_Manager::getCurrentConnection() if you only want to get the current connection. // Doctrine_Manager controls all the connections $manager = Doctrine_Manager::getInstance(); // open first connection $conn = $manager->openConnection(new PDO('dsn','username','password'), 'connection 1'); // open second connection $conn2 = $manager->openConnection(new PDO('dsn2','username2','password2'), 'connection 2'); $manager->getCurrentConnection(); // $conn2 $manager->setCurrentConnection('connection 1'); $manager->getCurrentConnection(); // $conn // iterating through connections foreach($manager as $conn) { }