Berkeley DB is not a relational database. In fact, it is based on ISAM (indexed sequential access method) technology. That means it is very good at handling dynamic data updates and look-ups of data, but it is lousy at handling the sort of queries that you would expect to be able to process using, say, Oracle 10g or DB2. In other words, it is used for a different sort of function, where you want to be able to rapidly insert new data and equally rapidly access it, but you don't actually want to do very much more with it.

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