title: What is the difference between DAO and DAL?
body: <p>Having studied Java at school I am quite familiar with the DAO-pattern(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Access_Object" rel="noreferrer">Data access object</a>). However at work I use .NET. In .NET there is often talk about the DAL(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_access_layer" rel="noreferrer">Data Access Layer</a>). To me their purpose seems quite similar. So the question is are DAO and DAL basically the same thing? Is the term DAL only made up so it wouldn't be mixed up with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Access_Objects" rel="noreferrer">Data Access Objects</a>?</p>