High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In computer software, a data access object (DAO) is an object that provides an abstract interface to some type of database or persistence mechanism, providing some specific operations without exposing details of the database. It provides a mapping from application calls to the persistence layer. 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).