Question

I was wondering if there was a lightweight, embeddable, key/value database out there.

Something like a lightweight Couchdb (RESTful, key/value, etc) where you just send it the key and it responds with appropriate values.

Thanks!

Answer 1

On the Related Projects page of the CouchDB wiki, under “Alternatives” they mention some similar projects:

• Feather DB^* CouchDB clone in java.
• StrokeDB^* A CouchDB-like database written in Ruby to make embedding into Ruby apps easier.
• mongoDB A high-performance, open source, schema-free document-oriented database.

And of course Tokyo Cabinet which has already been mentioned.

There’s also neo4j which is a “graph database” for java.

Of course, part of the power of CouchDB and some of the others is not just being able to store key/value pairs, but the high capacity, replication, and in particular views, which are basically the way of running queries over your documents.

If you just needed a simple key/value datastore that you can embed into your program, that doesn’t have to hold gigs of data, the venerable GDBM might suit your needs.

A little hard to answer without knowing a bit more about your needs (programming language, concurrency requirements, data volumes and such).

^* Web site does not appear to be working at the time of this writing.