The disclosure herein describes causing a database operation to be performed via a microservice. A translation layer exposes a translation API that is configured to receive commands in an API command format. A command in the API command format is received from a command sender that includes a database type. A microservice configured to perform the received command based on the included database type is identified. The command is transferred to the identified microservice, which is configured to translate the transferred command to a database command format associated with the database type and perform the translated command in association with a database. A response is received from the microservice based on performance of the command by the microservice, wherein the received response is in a response format that is compatible with the exposed translation API, and the received response is provided, via the exposed translation API, to the command sender.