# Driver A driver is a piece of software that connects one thing to another. Device drivers connect the operating system to a piece of hardware, such as a printer or mic. Then whatever software that runs on that OS can use the device driver currently installed. For example, any word processors you have installed on that OS can use the currently installed printer drivers. A database driver connects one piece of software to another. Think of it as middleware. So if I'm using Excel and I want to import from or export to a MySQL database, I need to do it in the right format. But I may need to later export it to a different database, say an Oracle database. I want to be able to use the same API call (Application Program Interface). As long as I have the proper drivers installed, I can do that. From the user, it looks like the same command to each database. --- Date: 20210622 Links to: References: * [How does a database driver work](https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-database-driver-work)