interacting with an updatedb generated data file within python

[birdsong]

Does anybody have any recommendations on how to interact with the data
file that updatedb generates?  I'm running through a file list in
sqlite that I want to check against the file system. updatedb is
pretty optimized for building an index and storing it, but I see no
way to query the db file other than calling locate itself.  This would
require me to fork and exec for every single file I want to verify -
I'd be better off doing the stat myself in that case, but I'd really
rather let updatedb build the index for me.

I searched high and low for any sort of library that is well suited
for reading these data files, but I've found nothing for any language
other than the source for locate and updatedb itself.