Data Access Object

Data Access Object

This article is about the data access object design pattern in object-oriented software design. For the Microsoft library of the same name, see Data Access Objects.

This article contains embedded lists that may be poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate. Please help to clean it up to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Where appropriate, incorporate items into the main body of the article.

In computer software, a data access object (DAO) is an object that provides an abstract interface to some type of database or other persistence mechanism. By mapping application calls to the persistence layer, DAOs provide some specific data operations without exposing details of the database. This isolation separates the concerns of what data accesses the application needs, in terms of domain-specific objects and data types (the public interface of the DAO), and how these needs can be satisfied with a specific DBMS, database schema, etc. (the implementation of the DAO).

Although this design pattern is equally applicable to most programming languages, most types of software with persistence needs, and most types of databases, it is traditionally associated with Java EE applications and with relational databases accessed via the JDBC API because of its origin in Sun Microsystems' best practice guidelines ("Core J2EE Patterns") for that platform.

Read more about Data Access Object:  Advantages, Tools and Frameworks

Famous quotes containing the words data, access and/or object:

    Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.
    Grace Baruch (20th century)

    Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.
    Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)