Making and accessing a database in matlab

So I'm working on a project, and I need to make a database and be able to access the data in it and manipulate it. So far all I've come up with is I can create a text file or excel file and have it read in every time, but is there another way I can create the database without having to open and read in the file each time? Or does it not matter and reading in a file would work great?