[Python-Dev] bsddb alternative (was Re: [issue3769] Deprecate bsddb for removal in 3.0) (original) (raw)

C. Titus Brown ctb at msu.edu
Thu Sep 4 16:22:18 CEST 2008

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 03:23:22PM +0200, Jesus Cea wrote: -> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- -> Hash: SHA1 -> -> Brett Cannon wrote: -> >> Related but tangential question that we were discussing on the pygr[0] -> >> mailing list -- what is the "official" word on a scalable object store -> >> in Python? We've been using bsddb, but is there an alternative? And -> >> what if bsddb is removed? -> > -> > Beyond shelve there are no official plans to add a specific object store. -> -> If you are storing million of objects, you'd better use a transactional -> storage, able to survive diskfulls or code/computer crashes.

We're using a write-once-read-many pattern of access, and it is simply a cache of a separate file (that remains around), so no, we don't better use a transactional storage :).

-> I will maintain "bsddb" as a separate (downloadable via PYPI) package -> whatever the fate of bsddb in Python stardard library be. So bsddb is a -> pretty safe bet, even if you need to install it separately.

Since I/we want to distribute pygr to end-users, this is really not a pleasant prospect. Also often the installation of Python itself goes much more smoothly than the installation of separately compiled binary packages, for all the obvious reasons (compiler/OS versions, lib versions, etc. etc.)

-> Compared to sqlite, you don't need to know SQL, you can finetuning (for -> example, using ACI instead of ACID, deciding store by store), and you -> can do replication and distributed transactions (useful, for example, if -> your storage is bigger than a single machine capacity, like my case). If -> you combine Berkeley DB with Durus, for example, all of this is -> abstracted and you simply use "regular" python objects.

I agree. I like bsddb for just this reason and I'd like to continue being able to use it! I think that there are many reasons why having such a thing in the stdlib is really useful and I also think it's worth exploring the ramifications of taking it out...

--t

C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu

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