Hello Marko and Musashi,
What makes Data Access different as a product are its runtime features.
Above all, using Data Access will bring to you a few unique features that are not present in Entity Framework. These are the support of database server engines different than Microsoft SQL Server (you can find the complete list
here), and the
Artificial API, which allows you to consume persistent types created during the runtime of your application (Telerik Sitefinity consumes Data Access like this).
Additionally, Data Access offers a very strong
LINQ implementation, and LINQ like
Bulk Update\Delete functionality, which can ease your work with the data in the database.
In web scenarios, it offers the
Level 2 Cache feature, which can dramatically improve the performance of your application. On the subject of performance, our
Profiler and Tuning Advisor will help you monitor it during either development or runtime. Furthermore, it detects potential problems like long running queries and displays warnings about them.
Data Access also distributes a number of handy APIs. For example, in case your application needs to play videos, through the data access layer, you could use our
Streaming API. Our
Fluent Mapping API supports
backend independent mapping, which will allow you to connect to more than one db engine with the same model. If you prefer to consume stored procedures and db functions instead of LINQ, you could use our
Low Level API.
In case you are interested, you could take a more high-level overview in
this blog post as well.
I hope this helps. Let us know, if you need further information or assistance.
Regards,
Doroteya
Telerik
OpenAccess ORM is now
Telerik Data Access. For more information on the new names, please, check out the
Telerik Product Map.