Most any application needs some form of persistence—a way to store the data outside of the application for safekeeping. The most basic way is to write data to the file system, but that can quickly become a slow and unwieldy way to solve the problem. A full-blown database provides a powerful way to index and retrieve data, but may also be overkill. Sometimes all you need is a quick way to take a freeform piece of information, associate it with a label, stash it somewhere, and pull it back out again in a jiffy.
Enter the key-value store. It’s essentially a database, but one with a highly specific purpose and a deliberately constrained design.
