What is the difference between an ORM and an ODM?

database orm odm
Odyss3us picture Odyss3us · Sep 4, 2012 · Viewed 63.2k times · Source

I am trying to figure out what the difference is between ORM and ODM, as far as I understand the concept, ORM (Object Relational Mapper) maps the relations between data, where as ODM (Object Document Mapper) deals with documents. Am I right in assuming that mySQL is an example of ORM and MongoDB is a example of ODM?

As I am sure you can see, I am not too familiar with the theory of the concept. Could someone please clarify the differences between the two?

Answer

Oded picture Oded · Sep 4, 2012

MySQL is an example of a relational database - you would use an ORM to translate between your objects in code and the relational representation of the data.

Examples of ORMs are nHibernate, Entity Framework, Dapper and more...

MongoDB is an example of a document database - you would use an ODM to translate between your objects in code and the document representation of the data (if needed).

Mandango is an example of an ODM for MongoDB.

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