What is best practice to create a small database in python?

Question

If I want to create a small database in Python, what would be the best practice to do it?

For instance, if I want to store output from Cisco's command "sh ip route" in a database,

O       1.1.1.1 [110/2] via 10.0.0.1, 00:00:23, FastEthernet0/0

stores these values:

1.1.1.1 —> next hop, outgoing interface, source (like O, C, S)

1. Using postgreSQL, mySQL
2. A nested dictionary something like this {'1.1.1.1':{next hop: {outgoing interface: source}}
3. a dictionary with a list as a value {'1.1.1.1':[next hop, outgoing interface, source]}
4. Any other option?

I feel that SQL would be the best solution but if not SQL, what is another option?

Answer 1

routing tables look to have a form more similar to documents that relational tables in a RDBMS like Postgres or MySQL.

I would prefer to use a document oriented database in this case. Regarding which database to use it depends on your deployment scenario and application architecture.

If your aim is a database server which can be accessed via the network then Mongo is a very good choice. If you are going for a single-node application which will access the data only locally, then you can have a look in TinyDB.

With TinyDB your code would look like:

 from tinydb import TinyDB, Query

 db = TinyDB('/path/to/db.json')
 db.insert({ 'Destination': '1.1.1.1',
             'NextHop': '10.0.0.1',
             'A': '*',
             'P': 'B',
             'Prf': 170',
             ....
            })   

And finally look for the individual routes as:

  route = Query()
  db.search(route.Destination == '1.1.1.1')
  # [{'Destination': '1.1.1.1','NextHop': '10.0.0.1','A': '*',...}]

or get all of them at once:

  db.all()

Hope it helps!