Master / Slave switch in the Zend Framework application layer

An object of type Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract remembers what Table object produced it. But you can change the associated Table before you call save().

$readDb = Zend_Db::factory(...);  // replica
$writeDb = Zend_Db::factory(...); // master
Zend_Db_Table::setDefaultAdapter($readDb);

$myReadTable = new MyTable(); // use default adapter
$myWriteTable = new MyTable($writeDb);

$row = $myTable->find(1234)->current();

$row->column1 = 'value';

$row->setTable($myWriteTable);

$row->save();