title: Table Data Gateway and Model
body: <p>I've heard the phrase "fat model, thin controller" and believe I understand it's implications. While working through the <a href="http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/learning.quickstart.create-model.html" rel="nofollow">Zend Quickstart Guide</a> I have come across the Table Data Gateway pattern.</p>
  
  <p>It seems to me that this design pattern is advocating a fourth component to the MVC stack. It is moving away from a "Fat Model" to "thin model, thin controller and fat TableDataGateway". From my understanding of this design pattern, the Model becomes very little more than a storage mechanism for the data that the TableDataGateway stuffs into it.</p>
  
  <p>I understand the advantages of the Table Data Gateway design pattern with abstracting our data source, my question isn't about the design pattern, but rather how it fits into the MVC stack.</p>
  
  <p><em>P.S. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting my question into good words. If someone wants to edit this to make it clearer or make a suggestion I'm open!</em></p>