If you do not need performance, use a database.

To make a relative transparent treansition: Tie::Array::DBD. The more complex your data, the slower it is, but you can work around memory limitations of a computer relatively easy (which was the only motivation for this module).

Here's an overview of speed differences on my machine. Higher numbers are better:

  Size op       perl     SQLite         Pg      mysql    MariaDB      
+  CSV
------ -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- -----
+-----
    20 rd  6666666.7   227272.7     3916.2     7538.6     9267.8     4
+444.4
    20 wr  6666666.7   172413.8     2842.1     1759.3     1882.7    11
+560.7
   200 rd  8333333.3   414078.7    12738.9     8710.4    24330.9      
+901.9
   200 wr  9523809.5   310559.0    12190.7     7399.7    13898.5    13
+556.6
   600 rd 24000000.0   371977.7    14399.2    15106.9    24207.2      
+346.0
   600 wr 20689655.2   376884.4    14260.9    12633.4    23992.3    14
+080.5
  2000 rd 13986014.0   392310.7    45244.8    23147.1    23431.8      
+107.1
  2000 wr 51282051.3   405515.0    18964.5    16786.4    31738.5    14
+729.2
 20000 rd 25380710.7   374995.3    42310.4    22139.2    22889.8      
+    -
 20000 wr 40899795.5   390930.4    33410.4    37265.1    32508.7      
+    -
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