We compare the dark energy model constraints obtained by using recent standard ruler data (baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) at z = 0.2 and 0.35 and cosmic microwave background (CMB) shift parameters R and l_a) with the corresponding constraints obtained by using recent type Ia supernovae (SnIa) standard candle data (ESSENCE+SNLS+HST from astro-ph/0701510). We find that, even though both classes of data are consistent with ΛCDM (CDM: cold dark matter) at the 2σ level, there is a systematic difference between the two classes of data. In particular, we find that for practically all values of the parameters (Ω_0m,Ω_b) in the 2σ range of the three-year WMAP data (WMAP3) best fit, ΛCDM is significantly more consistent with the SnIa data than with the CMB+BAO data. For example for (Ω_0m,Ω_b) = (0.24,0.042) corresponding to the best fit values of WMAP3, the dark energy equation of state parameterization w(z) = w₀+w₁(z/1+z) best fit is at a 0.5σ distance from ΛCDM (w₀ = −1,w₁ = 0) using the SnIa data and 1.7σ away from ΛCDM using the CMB+BAO data. There is a similar trend in the earlier data (SNLS versus CMB+BAO at z = 0.35). This trend is such that the standard ruler CMB+BAO data show a mild preference for crossing of the phantom divide line w = −1, while the recent SnIa data favor ΛCDM. Despite this mild difference in trends, we find no statistically significant evidence for violation of the cosmic distance duality relation . For example, using a prior of Ω_0m = 0.24, we find η = 0.95 ± 0.025 in the redshift range 0<z<2, which is consistent with distance duality at the 2σ level.