Malete is a database program optimised for storage, search and transmission of bibliographic data. It was designed for use as the backend of the OpenIsis project (an open source version of the CDS/ISIS Information Storage and Retrieval system developed by the United Nations for the benefit of developing countries), but later abstracted into a standalone product.
A Malete database is an indexed and sorted binary file in ISO 2709 format, designed for quick retrieval of multi-field records in response to queries. It supports the concept of hierarchies of fields.
The Malete core is designed to run in multiple processes in parallel. Malete includes a query language with the concept of retrieval from distributed databases built in.
The Malete program can be tightly integrated with a Tcl interpreter, with individual records represented as custom Tcl objects that can be assigned to variables, arrays, etc., and database views represented as commands.