I've just released 0.4.0 of semidbm. This represents a number of really cool features. See the full changelog for more details.
One of the biggest features is python 3 support. I was worried about not introducing a performance regression by supporting python 3. Fortunately, this was not the case.
In fact, performance increased. This was possible for a number of reasons. First, the index file and data file were combined into a single file. This means that a __setitem__ call results in only a single write() call. Also, semidbm now uses a binary format. This results in a more compact form and it's easier to create the sequence of bytes we need to write out to disk. This is also including the fact that semidbm now includes checksum data for each write that occurs.
Try it out for yourself.
I think at this time, semidbm has more than exceeded it's original goal, which was to be a pure python cross platform key value storage that had reasonable performance. So what's next for semidbm? In a nutshell, higher level abstractions (aka the "fun stuff"). Code that builds on the simple key value storage of semidbm.db and provides additional features. And as we get higher level, I think it makes sense to reevaluate the original goals of semidbm and whether or not it makes sense to carry those goals forward:
Some ideas I've been considering:
Semidbm is a pure python dbm. While the docs go into the specifics of how to use the dbm, I'd like to offer a more editorialized view of semidbm (the why of semidbm).
Semidbm is a pure python dbm, which is basically a key value store. Similar python modules in the standard library include gdbm, bsddb, and dumbdbm.
The first question one might ask is:
Another persistent key value store, really?
Fair question.
It all started when I was working on a project where I needed a simple key value store, accessible from python. Technically, I was using the shelve module, and it decided to use the Berkeley DB (via anydbm). So far so good. But there were a few issues:
The first issue is regarding availability. Not all python installations are the same. Just because a user has python installed does not mean they necessarily have all the standard libraries installed. I just checked my python install on my Macbook, and I don't have the bsddb module available. On my debian system I don't have the gdbm module installed. Given that these packages are just python bindings to C based dbms, installing these packages involves:
None of these steps are that much work, but are there any alternatives?
On all of my systems I have the dbm module available. This is a C based DBM that seems to available on most python installations. How fast is it? There's a scripts/benchmark script available in the semidbm repo that can benchmark any dbm like module. Here's the results for the dbm module:
$ scripts/benchmark -d dbm
Generating random data.
Benchmarking: <module 'dbm' from
'/Users/jsaryer/.virtualenvs/semidbm/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/dbm.so'>
num_keys : 1000000
key_size : 16
value_size: 100
HASH: Out of overflow pages. Increase page size
ERROR: exception caught when benchmarking <module 'dbm' from '/Users/jsaryer/.virtualenvs/semidbm/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/dbm.so'>: cannot add item to database
Or in other words, it made it to about 450000 keys before this error was generated. So storing a large number of keys doesn't seem possible with python's dbm module.
While some dbms that aren't available simply require compiling/installing the right packages and files, there are some dbms that just aren't available on certain platforms (notoriously windows).
Well fortunately, there's a fallback python module that's guaranteed to be available on every single python installation: dumbdbm.
Unfortunately, the performance is terrible. There's also a number of undesirable qualities:
To be fair, dumbdbm was most likely written as a last resort fallback to the more classic dbms. It's also really old (written by Guido himself if I remember correctly).
Hopefully the goals of semidbm are becoming clearer. I just wanted a dbm that was:
The first two points I felt I could achieve by simply using python, and not requiring any C libraries or C extensions.
The third point I felt I could improve by taking dumbdbm and making some minor improvements.
So that's the background of semidbm.
I think so. The benchmark page has more details regarding the performance, but as a quick comparison to semidbm:
$ scripts/benchmark -d semidbm -n 10000
Generating random data.
Benchmarking: <module 'semidbm'>
num_keys : 10000
key_size : 16
value_size: 100
fill_sequential : time: 0.126, micros/ops: 12.597, ops/s: 79382.850, MB/s: 8.782
read_hot : time: 0.041, micros/ops: 4.115, ops/s: 243036.754, MB/s: 26.886
read_sequential : time: 0.039, micros/ops: 3.861, ops/s: 258973.197, MB/s: 28.649
read_random : time: 0.042, micros/ops: 4.181, ops/s: 239171.571, MB/s: 26.459
delete_sequential : time: 0.058, micros/ops: 5.819, ops/s: 171856.854, MB/s: 19.012
$ scripts/benchmark -d dumbdbm -n 10000
Generating random data.
Benchmarking: <module 'dumbdbm'>
num_keys : 10000
key_size : 16
value_size: 100
fill_sequential : time: 1.824, micros/ops: 182.400, ops/s: 5482.447, MB/s: 0.607
read_hot : time: 0.165, micros/ops: 16.543, ops/s: 60450.332, MB/s: 6.687
read_sequential : time: 0.167, micros/ops: 16.733, ops/s: 59762.818, MB/s: 6.611
read_random : time: 0.175, micros/ops: 17.505, ops/s: 57126.529, MB/s: 6.320
delete_sequential : time: 99.025, micros/ops: 9902.522, ops/s: 100.984, MB/s: 0.011
From the output above, writes are an order of magnitude faster (and semidbm computes and writes out a checksum for every value) and reads are almost 4 times faster. Deletion performance is much better (0.058 seconds vs. 99.025 seconds for deleting 10000 keys).
Also, every single insertion/update/deletion is immediately written out to disk so if python crashes, at worst you'd lose one key, the key that was being writen out to disk when python crashed.
I think if you ever need to use a pure python dbm, semidbm is a great choice. Any time you'd otherwise have to use dumbdbm, use semidbm instead.
There's a number of things I'd like to investigate in the future:
For more info, check out the docs and the github repo.