Akelos has the concept of environments to represent the stages of an application's lifecycle: test, development, and production are the defaults.  Specify your choice defining **AK_ENVIRONMENT** constant in your **config/config.php** file like:

<code>
define('AK_ENVIRONMENT', 'development');
</code>

AK_ENVIRONMENT can currently have one of three values:
  * development
  * test
  * production

Within a Akelos application, **AK_ENVIRONMENT** can most easily be accessed with the following code:

<code>if('development' == AK_ENVIRONMENT){ 
 $Model->dbug(); // Enables SQL query output
}</code>

Each environment has a corresponding environment file (eg. **config/environments/name.php**) with its particular config code.

Loading Akelos environment gives you a fully configured context for accessing the model in an Akelos application. This is extremely useful when you need to run upgrade or maintenance scripts. Or when you need to interrogate the model ad-hoc.