howard, et al, hi,
i notice that LMDB stores data in an "append only" manner (from the Q&A). i was thinking of recommending that in python the buffers be handed around with *direct* and persistent pointers to the data within the LMDB shm/memory-map.
the reason that i believe this will be successful is because the circumstances are rather unusual: once data is entered (added) it is *never* overwritten, updated, changed, or modified. there simply is no need [in this application]. so there will only ever be insertion (once and only once) or controlled and monitored deletion (by age of record).
under these circumstances is it perfectly reasonable to pass around the pointers to the buffers returned from value look-ups *indefinitely*? if so that would be awesome.
l.