Berkeley DB Reference Guide: Compatibility with historic UNIX interfaces

Berkeley DB Reference Guide:
Programmer Notes

Compatibility with historic UNIX interfaces

The Berkeley DB version 2 library provides backward-compatible interfaces for the historic UNIX dbm, ndbm, and hsearch interfaces. It also provides a backward-compatible interface for the historic Berkeley DB 1.85 release.

Berkeley DB version 2 does not provide database compatibility for any of the previous interfaces, and existing databases must be converted manually. To convert existing databases from the Berkeley DB 1.85 format to the Berkeley DB version 2 format, review the db_dump185 and db_load information. No utilities are provided to convert UNIX dbm, ndbm, or hsearch databases.