striking already mentioned mdb, and I will mention kdb+ I'm not sure what those pains are that you are talking about. mmap allows use to share buffers with the

striking already mentioned mdb, and I will mention kdb+ I'm not sure what those pains are that you are talking about. mmap allows use to share buffers with the OS in a way that is much more efficient than you can do with plain reads; it costs you some asynchrony and (practically these days) the ability to use a 32-bit processor. Other than that, it is the same - you still have to reason about locality of reference and stuff.