Pros and cons of Perl DBM implementations? (GDBM, Berkeley DB, etc.)

Question

I've used GDBM and Berkeley DB/DB_File for earlier Perl projects, but should I be using them for new ones? What are the pros and cons of different Perl DBM implementations?

(Related: Are tools like DBM::Deep or KyotoCabinet too slow/heavy compared to traditional DBMs, when all you need is a transparent hash for binary/text data?)

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 27 '11 at 20:43

The AnyDBM_File module has a nice chart for the various dbms. I don't know how out of date this is though.

                         odbm    ndbm    sdbm    gdbm    bsd-db
                         ----    ----    ----    ----    ------
 Linkage comes w/ perl   yes     yes     yes     yes     yes
 Src comes w/ perl       no      no      yes     no      no
 Comes w/ many unix os   yes     yes[0]  no      no      no
 Builds ok on !unix      ?       ?       yes     yes     ?
 Code Size               ?       ?       small   big     big
 Database Size           ?       ?       small   big?    ok[1]
 Speed                   ?       ?       slow    ok      fast
 FTPable                 no      no      yes     yes     yes
 Easy to build          N/A     N/A      yes     yes     ok[2]
 Size limits             1k      4k      1k[3]   none    none
 Byte-order independent  no      no      no      no      yes
 Licensing restrictions  ?       ?       no      yes     no

 [0] on mixed universe machines, may be in the bsd compat library, which
     is often shunned.
 [1] Can be trimmed if you compile for one access method.
 [2] See DB_File.  Requires symbolic links.
 [3] By default, but can be redefined.

That omits the `BerkeleyDB` module, which has certain advantages; the “bsd-db” it names there is the `DB_File` module, which is a simpler interface. — tchrist, Jun 27 '11 at 22:36

Pros and cons of Perl DBM implementations? (GDBM, Berkeley DB, etc.)

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