bsddb package - I'm confused, need help

[Jp Calderone]

Mike Moum wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> I have some questions about the bsddb package that comes with Python 2.3 
> that I can't find answers for.  I've googled and read the documentation.
> 
> 1. Does the Berkeley database from Sleepycat need to be installed 
> separately from Python, or is it included?  The documentation states 
> that bsddb requires the Berkeley DB library 3.1 or later, but it seems 
> to work without it (on Debian, at least - I don't think it's installed).
> 

   It is.  Debian has a great package dependency system.

> 2. My anticipated application requires several users to access the same 
> database.  I can open the same database with several users, but changes 
> made by one user don't show up in the other user's data, and whoever 
> closes the database last gets the "final say", as it were - their data 
> overwrites the data of the users that closed before them.  I suspect the 
> DBEnv function is needed somehow, but I can't figure out how to make it 
> work.  I do not get enlightenment from the updated documentation on 
> Sourceforge.

   You almost certainly want to use DBEnv even if you don't care about 
concurrent access.  You also want to initialize the transaction 
subsystem.  There's also a hundred other important details.  For a 
wrapper with fewer pointy edges, you may want to take a look at atop. 
It isn't finished or individually packaged/released, but at the very 
least it will be an educational read.

   http://www.divmod.org/Home/Projects/Atop/index.html

> 
> Can anyone help, or point me to some documentation that will explain 
> these things?

   The Sleepycat documentation is quite complete.  Reading all of
http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/ref/toc.html is not a bad idea.  There is 
also a Berkeley DB usenet group, comp.databases.berkeley-db, where a lot 
of smart, experienced people hang out :)

   Jp