NoSQL or YesSQL

Question

I have a huge dictionary of words:

"word1" => [value1]
"word2" => [value2]
"word3" => [value3, value2]
...
"word400000000" => [value455, value3435, ..., value3423]

number of words is really big.

Now I want to be able to retrieve, really fast, all the values which are being pointed by word. word is string value.

What are the best tools to use? I thought of simple DB solution, but DBA guys said that it will not work really fast.

So, before I open Cormen's book, is there some ready solutions for that problem?

Answer 1

Look at key/value storage engines such as Berkeley DB. They are very fast at that sort of thing.