Fingerprint evidence has been mentioned. How much weight is attached to that depends on how good the lifted print is ; lifted prints vary in quality a great deal. Some are too poor to be used at all. The same applies to DNA. The quality of the samples vary. Some give details which could only replicated in one in a million, some are very much better than that.
Both are evidence, but it is much harder for a person to avoid leaving their DNA than it is their liftable fingerprints, and in many, or most, crimes fingerprint evidence will never be available at all because the relevant surfaces never take, or did not take, a print in the first place.
A national database is a good idea but impracticable and expensive if, by that, is meant the taking and keeping of samples from every resident. It is unfortunate that DNA samples are not now kept in all cases where they were taken but I suppose the same could be said of fingerprints.It would be no great trouble to take and keep a DNA sample from each newborn child though.