ZF 1.8 with new Zend_Application provides an easy way to get your models loaded automatically and resources to be shared across the whole application. Just need to know the naming convention. As I am using a simple database connection to illustrate the example, you also get a sneak peak at Zend_Db. Sorry for ramble and typos. In case the topic is still confusion, stay tuned for my next set of tutorials on Zend_Auth and Zend_Acl that make use of all concepts shown so far so you can see how it all comes together.