Patent ID: 7051041

Claim:
An extended database management (DBM) database, comprising: a DBM database having a schema defining a plurality of table records, each record having a structure defined by a filename, a number of columns, a key field, and an optional external field, wherein the DBM database comprises a plurality of DBM index and DBM data files, each index file corresponding to a data file and optional external data files, wherein the DBM data files have limited memory allocation for storing data associated with each record and the external data files are capable of storing data larger than can be stored in the DBM data files; a front end to the DBM database using structured query language SQL calls to select records in the DBM database; and means for locking and unlocking the DBM database to maintain database integrity during database access, wherein the means for locking and unlocking uses files residing on the system as semaphores to identify a locked/unlocked state.