ODBC
ODBC stands for Open DataBase Connectivity and is a common driver standard to allow applications to communicate with various databases independent of the type of database.
The most popular databases, like Access, SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL can all connect directly via OleDB without the use of an ODBC data source.
ODBC can be used to connect to less commonly used formats, including Excel files, IBM DB/2 and some proprietary databases.
To use ODBC, open the ODBC Data Sources (32-bit) application from the Windows start menu and create a new data source (the 32-bit version is important!). For System and User data sources you can use the data source name to reference it in in the data source setting. You can also save the ODBC configuration to a .DSN file and reference it via the file path.