We have discovered a way how to realize master/slave support with cake (also with multiple slaves). This old post is completely depricated: http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php/browse_thread/thread/58ea010f930fab6c Because Model::find() and Model::save() create the '$db'-handle many lines before it calles the callbacks ::beforeFind() and ::beforeSave(). The way we realized is to overwrit