---
title: "What is the difference between database driver and data provider?"  
description: "What is the difference between database driver and data provider?"  
author: "yash Singh"  
published: 2011-05-10  
updated: 2011-05-11  
canonical: https://www.mindstick.com/forum/237/what-is-the-difference-between-database-driver-and-data-provider  
category: "ado.net"  
tags: ["ado.net"]  
reading_time: 1 minute  

---

# What is the difference between database driver and data provider?

What is the [difference](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/157114/good-news-or-bad-news-and-the-difference-is) between [database](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/12226/use-of-database-in-sencha-extjs-and-insert-record-from-user-form-using-ajax) [driver](https://yourviews.mindstick.com/view/80820/ola-driver-rude-behavior-with-mindstick-owners) and [data provider](https://www.mindstick.com/forum/34061/unable-to-find-the-requested-dot-net-framework-data-provider-it-may-not-be-installed)?

## Replies

### Reply by Anonymous User

Hi,\
\
Driver is a program installed on a workstation or a server; it allows programs to interact with a Database Management System (DBMS). Such as, JDBC driver provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interface (APIs) available in J2EE.\
\
A [data](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/13050/salesforce-aiming-to-dominate-predictive-analytics-with-data-science) [provider](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/92701/who-is-the-best-telecom-solution-provider) is a set of libraries that is used to communicate with data source. Such as, SQL data provider for SQL, Oracle data provider for Oracle, OLE DB data provider for access, excel and MySQL.

For more information about this please visit following link

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a6cd7c08(v=VS.100).aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a6cd7c08(v=VS.100).aspx)\
\


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