Python: cPickle vs ConfigParser vs Shelve Performance
March 26, 2009 § 4 Comments
I need to store large number of key-values to map my Python objects. These key-values DO NOT have to be replicated across multiple servers and the project DOES NOT require external storage systems such as RDBMS or Berkeley DB or others. The least external dependencies the better.
That leads me to cPickle vs ConfigParser vs Shelve. cPickle is obvious contender, it is fast and easy to use.
ConfigParser is an interface for writing config file, but its format is very key-value ish, so it counts.
Shelve is obvious too, because of its interface.
So I ran profiler test using hot shot and here’s the result:
Profile: Saving 100000 key-value to pickle file
700001 function calls in 2.330 CPU seconds
Profile: Extracting 100000 key-value from pickle file
4 function calls in 0.258 CPU seconds
Profile: Saving 100000 key-value in ConfigParser file
900004 function calls in 2.502 CPU seconds
Profile: Extracting 100000 key-value from ConfigParser file
300007 function calls in 1.936 CPU seconds
Profile: Saving 100000 key-value to shelve file
1300047 function calls (1300045 primitive calls) in 10.091 CPU seconds
Profile: Extracting 100000 key-value from shelve file
500027 function calls in 6.527 CPU seconds
From the results:
- Shelve is disappointingly slow. It execute 1,300,047 calls???
- cPickle is not bad at all. As expected, it performs really quick.
- ConfigParser is the biggest surprise here, I was expecting it to be much slower.
Side Notes:
- I use threading.Lock before setting the key-value to prevent resource contention (which is real life case).
- Any improvements is greatly appreciated. Especially different data storage that I’m not aware of.
- Code can be found here.
First, why did you include dictionary creation in time measurements? Second, why are you recreating this dictionary when you load values with cPickle?
data = pickle.load(output)
output.close()
for i in xrange(how_many):
result = data["key_%s" % i]
You can just
result = dataand be done.That said, your conclusion is still correct.
Thanks!
Oops, my second point is not corrent — you’re not recreating. But still, why this “for” loop?
P.S. Sorry for writing my name in Russian.
@Dmitry
Your russian name is awesome. =)
The for loop is just convenience to generate a lot items.
Use Shelve when you have a large amount of data that you only need small parts of at a time.
Use cPickle when you have data that you want to access all at once.
Basically between Shelve and cPickle, you are trading disk-access speed for in-memory-access speed.