Kyoto Cabinet is a library of routines for managing a database
Kyoto Cabinet is a library of routines for managing a database. The database is a simple data file containing records, each is a pair of a key and a value. Every key and value is serial bytes with variable length. Both binary data and character string can be used as a key and a value. Each key must be unique within a database. There is neither concept of data tables nor data types. Records are organized in hash table or B+ tree.
Kyoto Cabinet runs very fast. For example, elapsed time to store one million records is 0.9 seconds for hash database, and 1.1 seconds for B+ tree database. Moreover, the size of database is very small. For example, overhead for a record is 16 bytes for hash database, and 4 bytes for B+ tree database. Furthermore, scalability of Kyoto Cabinet is great. The database size can be up to 8EB (9.22e18 bytes).
Kyoto Cabinet is written in the C++ language, and provided as API of C++, C, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, and Lua. Kyoto Cabinet is available on platforms which have API conforming to C++03 with the TR1 library extensions. Kyoto Cabinet is a free software licensed under the GNU General Public License. On the other hand, a commercial license is also provided. If you use Kyoto Cabinet within a proprietary software, the commercial license is required.
