How to implement persistent lookup table

My Java application uses a read-only lookup table, which is stored in an XML file. When the application starts it just reads the file into a HashMap. So far, so good, but since the table is growing I don't like loading the entire table into the memory at once. RDBMS and NoSQL key-value s开发者_如何学编程tores seem overkill to me. What would you suggest?

Makes you wish Java would allow to allocate infinite amounts of heap as memory mapped file :-)

If you use Java 5, then use Java DB; it's a database engine written in Java, based on Apache Derby. If you know SQL, then setting up an embedded database takes only a couple of minutes. Since you can create the database again every time your app is started, you don't have to worry about permissions, DB schema migration, stale caches, etc.

Or you could use an OO database like db4o but many people find it hard to make the mental transition to use queries to iterate over internal data structures. To take your example: You have a huge HashMap. Instead of using map.get(), you have to build a query using DB4o and then run that query on your map to locate items; otherwise DB4o would be forced to load the whole map at once.

Another alternative is to create your own minimal system: Read the data from the XML file and save it as a large random access file plus an index + caching so you can quickly look up items. If your objects are all serializable, then you can use ObjectInputStream to read the individual entries after seeking to the right place using the RandomAccessFile.