Microsoft Azure offers a wide range of database software and management options, hardly surprising as Microsoft has been a leading developer of database formats for decades. With all that in mind, we’re going to look at some of the powerhouses of the database world, from simple and straightforward solutions, to ones with more complex architecture that may require extensive customization. And major database software such as MySQL Community Server is now open source software,

Of course, you can use database software to design your own, and there are various text editors and IDE's available for coding your applications to run on them. Many people will be familiar with the basic set of columns and rows of a simple database, such as one made with Microsoft Access, but these days databases can be multi-layered, use different query languages, and work with different storage formats such as XML. And there are many different priorities that may affect the database architecture, whether it's query speed, storage format, security or even integration issues.

There are many different database platform options, all of which allow for the retrieval of datasets in different ways.

Best database software for archaeology