 <p><a href="http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-953" rel="nofollow">http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-953</a> in the comments:</p> <blockquote> <p>Identifiers that contain a dot (".") character are automatically split on the dot(s), and each piece quoted separately. Thus identifiers support the "schema"."table" or "table"."column" syntax.</p> <p>If you have a database design that has table names or column names containing a dot character, this should be a very uncommon case, and it is not recommended. But you can work around it by using Zend_Db_Expr and quote the identifier yourself.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://framework.zend.com/apidoc/1.9/Zend_Db/Expr/Zend_Db_Expr.html" rel="nofollow">http://framework.zend.com/apidoc/1.9/Zend_Db/Expr/Zend_Db_Expr.html</a></p> <p>So in this case the right way to write the field would be:</p> <pre><code>'attrib.floor' =&gt; new Zend_Db_Expr('`attrib.floor`') </code></pre>