Data management can be very simple. In some cases, just recording configuration in a flat text file is enough. More often, though, programs need to store and search a large amount of data, or structurally complex data. Of course, database management systems have been around for a long time. Data storage is a problem dating back to the earliest days of computing.
Software developers can choose from hundreds of good, commercially-available database systems.
The problem is selecting the one that best solves the problems that their applications face.