CentralNotice dbm From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search This article is about the family of database engines. For other uses, see DBM . The dbm library was a simple database engine , originally written by Ken Thompson and released by AT&T in 1979. The name is a three letter acronym for database manager , and can also refer to the family of database engines with APIs and features derived from the original dbm . The dbm library stores arbitrary data by use of a single key (a primary key ) in fixed-size buckets and uses hashing techniques to enable fast retrieval of the data by key. The hashing scheme used is a form of extendible hashing , so that the hashing scheme expands as new buckets are added to the database, meaning that, when nearly empty, the database starts with one bucket, which is then split when it becomes full. The two resulting ...