not in this case. ``Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\Connection`` is the interface for internal implementations for each driver. ``Doctrine\DBAL\Connection`` is the public API of DBAL. The fact that ``Doctrine\DBAL\Connection`` implements ``Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\Connection`` is a legacy mistake which cannot be fixed until Doctrine 3.0 because of BC. It totally makes sense to depend on the public API rather than on the internal one