getting to know Berkeley DB came upon this link:
http://simonwillison.net/2003/Nov/26/discoveringBerkeleyDB/
and this comment:
My only complaint about BerkeleyDB is that it's a wee bit flaky when not used with transactions. Databases can become corrupted, processes can deadlock, etc. I've found problems even when using CDS mode. Only problem with wrapping everything in transactions is the performance hit. So, here's what we came up with as a compromise (we use the excellent BerkeleyDB.pm module from our Perl code): lock the entire database on write with a semaphore. The overhead is negligible in terms of speed, but it's done a remarkable job of keeping our indexes very clean!
lock the entire database on write with a semaphore
???
say again?
Update (a few hours later)
i'm beginning to understand what the comment author meant....my rdbms experiece will freak out with these new ideas in berkeley db...
