PyMOTW: anydbm (and related modules)

anydbm is a front-end for DBM-style databases that use simple string values as keys to access records containing strings. It uses the whichdb module to identify dbhash, gdbm, and dbm databases, then opens them with the appropriate module. It is used as a backend for shelve, which knows how to store objects using pickle.

Read more at pymotw.com: anydbm