Have you had experience writing and executing queries directly to a database?

Yes, experience in writing and executing queries directly to the database in Node.js is usually associated with using drivers or ORM.

For example, using the mysql2 library, you can perform a query to a MySQL database:

const mysql = require('mysql2/promise');

async function queryDatabase() {
  const connection = await mysql.createConnection({host: 'localhost', user: 'root', database: 'test'});
  const [rows, fields] = await connection.execute('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?', [1]);
  console.log(rows);
  await connection.end();
}

queryDatabase();

This approach allows direct management of SQL queries, which is useful for optimization and precise control over data.