An EViews database resembles a workfile in that it is used to contain a collection of EViews objects. It differs from a workfile in two major ways. First, unlike a workfile, the entire database need not be loaded into memory in order to access an object inside it; an object can be fetched or stored directly to or from the database on disk. Second, unlike a workfile page, the objects in a database are not restricted to being of a single frequency or range. A database could contain a collection of annual, monthly, and daily series, all with different numbers of observations.

EViews databases also differ from workfiles in that they support powerful query features which can be used to search through the database to find a particular series or a set of series with a common property. This makes databases ideal for managing large quantities of data.

While EViews has its own native storage format for databases, EViews also allows direct access to data stored in a variety of other formats through the same database interface. You can perform queries, copy objects to and from workfiles and other databases, and rename and delete objects within a database, all without worrying about in what format the data are actually stored.