Difference between driver and provider

Question

What is the difference between driver and provider in database? Is there are any explanation will be grateful.

sample : ADO.NET driver for MySQL vs providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"

Answer 1

From the MSDN Forum:

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 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. It serves as a bridge between an application and a data source and is used to retrieve data from a data source and to reconcile changes to that data back to the data source.

Source: MSDN-Forum