Technically those are unrelated to TAO. Those are all part of layers that sit on top of TAO. The TAO part is optional too. For example, you can put the Ent data access layer on top of MySQL directly.
Right, I wasn't trying to imply a relationship. I only meant to say that if they're willing to write about old news for one piece of tech, then maybe they'd do it for another.
It is an ORM, but I wouldn't call it just an ORM. I don't have experience with NHibernate, but most ORMs I have experience with feel like just a way progammatically build queries. I found EntMutator to provide nice abstractions to couple data changes with business logic like mutation triggers and observers. Again, all the additional tooling built around the Ent framework adds to the value.
