What I'm planning to do is a) parse a file for some lines matching a regular expression b) store the match in some sort of database / file so I don't have to do the parsing again and again c) call another program passing the matches as arguments

While I can imagine how to do a) and c), I'm a little bit unsure about b). The matches are of the form

key:attribute1:attribute2:attribute3

where attribute 2 may be optional. I'm thinking of storing the results in a simple database but the problem is the database needs to available on a number of Unix platform for the program to work. Are there any (simple) databases which can be found on any Unix platforms? Or should I use some sort of index-sequential file?