What is the difference between DAO and DAL?

Question

Having studied Java at school I am quite familiar with the DAO-pattern(Data access object). However at work I use .NET. In .NET there is often talk about the DAL(Data Access

Answer 1

A data access layer will contain many data access objects.

It's primary role is to decouple the business logic from the database logic and implementation.

For example the DAL may have a single method that will retrieve data from several tables, queries or stored procedures via one or more data access objects.

Changes to the database structure, DAOs, stored procedures or even database type should not incur changes to the business logic and this is down to the decoupling provided by the DAL.