Knut Urdalen, on seeing some of the recent discussion on why the ActiveRecord pattern sucks and talks about why, when presented with a the need for a database layer, he usually goes back to his own familiar Singleton-based style.

I normally use a simple solution using the Singleton pattern for managing the database connection, the Value Object pattern for all business objects and the Data Mapper pattern to manage the mapping between business objects and the database schema. It's as simple as that – handcrafted and no magic going on.

The post also includes his code for an example of a database connection - the creation of the Singleton interface class, making the Value Objects and customizing one for the type of "Product".