What is the difference between Data Access Objects (DAO) and Data provider (DP) patterns?
I've read about them and it seems to me that they're the same except that .NET uses the data provider terminology.
Actually both specify an entity which exposes a set of customized methods to read from or write to a database.
Indeed the term 'DAO' is the more generic one to use. DP is a term introduced by Microsoft in their products to do the exactly same work. You can refer this for more detail about DPs.