IBATIS Data Access Objects

iBATIS Data Access Objects is an abstraction layer that hides the details of your persistence solution and provides a common API to therest of your application.

When developing robust Java and .NET applications, it is often a good idea to isolate the specifics of your persistence implementationbehind a common API. Data Access Objects allow you to create simple components that provide access to your data withoutrevealing the specifics of the implementation to the rest of your application. Using DAOs you can allow your application tobe dynamically configured to use different persistence mechanisms. If you have a complex application with a number of differentdatabases and persistence approaches involved, DAOs can help you create a consistent API for the rest of your application.

For Java users, the Data Access Objects framework is bundled as part of the iBATIS Database Layer, which includes the SQL Maps Framework. Although packaged together, the DAO Framework is completely independent and can be used without SQL Maps. .NET users can download the DataAccess framework seperately from the DataMapper framework.