Hi reliability files, writing,reading and maintaining

[Paul Rubin]

"John Pote" <johnpote at blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
> 1. Are there any python modules 'out there' that might help in securely 
> writing such files.
> 2. Can anyone suggest a book or two on this kind of file management. (These 
> kind of problems must have been solved in the financial world many times).

It's a complicated subject and is intimately mixed up with details of
the OS and filesystem you're using.  The relevant books are books
about database implementation.  

One idea for your situation is use an actual database (e.g. MySQL or
PostgreSQL) to store the data, so someone else (the database
implementer) will have already dealt with the issues of making sure
data is flushed properly.  Use one of the Python DbAPI modules to
communicate with the database.