ADO.NET provides ongoing access to data sources such as SQL Server and XML, and data sources provided through OLE DB and ODBC. Custom data exchange applications can use ADO.NET to connect to these data sources and retrieve, process, and update the data that they contain.
ADO.NET separates data access from data manipulation into separate components that can be used separately or in tandem. ADO.NET includes the .NET Framework Data Providers for connecting to a database, executing a command, and obtaining results. These results are either processed directly, placed in an ADO.NET DataSet for the user in a special order, combined with data from several Sources, or transferred between levels. A DataSet can also be used independently of the .NET Framework data provider to locally manage data in an application or retrieved from XML.
ADO.NET is a layer that allows you to connect to the database and modify it using SQL connections, commands, parameters. ADO.NET MSDN
Object-relational mapping (ORM, O / RM, and O / R mapping tool) to computer science is a programming method for converting data between incompatible type systems in object-oriented programming languages. The result is a "database of virtual objects" that can be used from a programming language. There are both free and commercial packages that perform object-relational mapping, although some programmers prefer to create their own ORM tools.
Entity Framework and NHibernate are ORMs. This means that you do not work with SQL connections, commands, parameters - ORM does this for you and allows you to display the structure of your database in OOP mode: you can add, read, update, delete records in your database using objects in C #. You only need to correctly match your object with the database. Entity Framework built on ADO.NET and uses ADO.NET internally. SQL statements are generated by ORM. ORM
As a rule, access to the database without ORM is faster, but you must provide more lines of code. If you want to work with the database in OOP mode and write more readable code, you should choose ORM. It depends on your goals on what to choose.
There are micro ORMs (Dapper, BLToolkit) that allow you to write SQL queries and map parameters to object properties. Micro ORMs tend to have better performance than Full ORMs, but ADO.NET is still faster.
There are also some questions and answers on Stack Overflow: EF vs ADO.NET