Berkeley DB

Key/Data Pairs

Berkeley DB uses key/data pairs to identify elements in the database. That is, whenever you call a Berkeley DB interface, you present a key to identify the key/data pair on which you intend to operate.

For example, you might store the key/data pairs as follows:

Key	Data
fruit	apple
sport	cricket
drink	water

In each case, the first element of the pair is the key, and the second is the data. To store the first of these key/data pairs into the database, you call the Berkeley DB interface to store items with fruit as the key and apple as the data. At some future time, you could then retrieve the data item associated with fruit, and the Berkeley DB retrieval interface would return apple to you. Although there are many variations ...