The rawSql component works in much same way as Zend_Db_Select. You may use method overloading like $q->from()->where() or just use $q->parseQuery(). There are some differences though: <br \><br \> 1. In Doctrine_RawSql component you need to specify all the mapped table columns in curly brackets {} this is used for smart column aliasing. <br \><br \> 2. When joining multiple tables you need to specify the component paths with addComponent() method <br \><br \> The following example represents a very simple case where no addComponent() calls are needed. Here we select all entities from table entity with all the columns loaded in the records.