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Table of Contents
In Berkeley DB, a database is a collection of records. Records, in turn, consist of key/data pairings.
Conceptually, you can think of a database as containing a two-column table where column 1 contains a key and column 2 contains data. Both the key and the data are managed using Dbt class instances (see Database Records for details on this class ). So, fundamentally, using a DB database involves putting, getting, and deleting database records, which in turns involves efficiently managing information encapsulated by Dbt objects. The next several chapters of this book are dedicated to those activities.
You open a database by instantiating a Db object and then calling its open() method.
Note that by default, DB does not create databases if they do not already exist. To override this behavior, specify the DB_CREATE flag on the open() method.
The following code fragment illustrates a database open:
#include <db_cxx.h>
...
Db db(NULL, 0); // Instantiate the Db object
u_int32_t oFlags = DB_CREATE; // Open flags;
try {
// Open the database
db.open(NULL, // Transaction pointer
"my_db.db", // Database file name
NULL, // Optional logical database name
DB_BTREE, // Database access method
oFlags, // Open flags
0); // File mode (using defaults)
// DbException is not subclassed from std::exception, so
// need to catch both of these.
} catch(DbException &e) {
// Error handling code goes here
} catch(std::exception &e) {
// Error handling code goes here
}