MySQL Connector/ODBC provides both driver-manager based and native interfaces to the MySQL database, with full support for MySQL functionality, including stored procedures, transactions and, with Connector/ODBC 5.1 and higher, full Unicode compliance. Typically, you need to install Connector/ODBC only on Windows machines. For Unix and Mac OS X, you can use the native MySQL network or named pipes to communicate with your MySQL database. You may need Connector/ODBC for Unix or Mac OS X if you have an application that requires an ODBC interface to communicate with the database. Applications that require ODBC to communicate with MySQL include ColdFusion, Microsoft Office, and Filemaker Pro.