Why a Flat File Database Library?
It is time inefficient, error prone, and hard to write a set of routines that manages keys, records, and files. While it may be hard to justify the cost of some of the high end products, it is equally hard to justify the enormous investment of time and hassle in writing your own set of database routines. A flat file data base engine is an excellent compromise between cost and features. This tool is reasonably efficient, and is within most programmers budgets. It supplies you with the code that is the most difficult to write. There will still be an investment of time and energy that will be necessary, but it won t be nearly as dear as starting from scratch. This kind of library has three main features: A scheme for record allocation, deletion, and reuse of deleted record file space. A record indexing scheme. This is usually some sort of b-tree, but can be a hash table or some other indexing system. Extensive error checking during record and key operations, and result codes that indicate
