ASCII database for fast queries of relatively stable data

This paper describes qddb, a database program suite that addresses the common situation in which data are infrequently changed. Searches in the stable parts of databases are very efficient because they use hash-based searching through a completely inverted index, whereas searches in updated sections are less so. All files used by qddb are in ASCII format, so they can be easily modified by a knowledgeable user with a simple text editor. The ASCII format does not detract significantly from the efficiency of our database package, and it allows databases to be distributed and completely portable between architectures. The qddb suite currently runs under both BSD and System V Unix on a variety of machines. It is capable of querying large databases on small machines with limited memory.