The commutative and homological algebra of modules over posets is developed, as closely parallel as possible to the algebra of finitely generated modules over noetherian commutative rings, in the direction of finite presentations, primary decompositions, and resolutions. Interpreting this finiteness in the language of derived categories of subanalytically constructible sheaves proves two conjectures due to Kashiwara and Schapira concerning sheaves with microsupport in a given cone. The motivating case is persistent homology of arbitrary filtered topological spaces, especially the case of multiple real parameters. The algebraic theory yields computationally feasible, topologically interpretable data structures, in terms of birth and death of homology classes, for persistent homology indexed by arbitrary posets. The exposition focuses on the nature and ramifications of a suitable finiteness condition to replace the noetherian hypothesis. The tameness condition introduced for this purpose captures finiteness for variation in families of vector spaces indexed by posets in a way that is characterized equivalently by distinct topological, algebraic, combinatorial, and homological manifestations. Tameness serves both the theoretical and computational purposes: it guarantees finite primary decompositions, as well as various finite presentations and resolutions all related by a syzygy theorem, and the data structures thus produced are computable in addition to being interpretable. The tameness condition and its resulting theory are new even in the finitely generated discrete setting, where being tame is materially weaker than being noetherian.