Just looking for a quick comment on what is gained using the non-dcraw API. I have read through most of the documentation and it seems to me that they can achieve similar functionality. I get the impression that the libraw dcraw API was meant to ease migration efforts from the original dcraw.

I don't see an inherent benefit between the two methods reading the the documentation, which is why I'm curious.
I suspect if I were using more of libraw's processing tools it would make sense to use the non-dcraw api, but I'd like to confirm that.