Full-text search engines evolved much later than traditional database engines, as corporations and governments in electronic format. These new text documents didn't fit well into the old table-style databases, so the need for unstructured full-text searching was apparent.

Since it was developed later, search engine technology borrowed heavily from the database world, and many search engines still employ some type of traditional table structures in their underlying architecture. Some text retrieval companies were even staffed with employees who came from traditional database company backgrounds. Many of the key RDBMS paradigms have also migrated into search engine technology, though often renamed or recast.