Berkeley DB Reference Guide: Programmer notes FAQ

What priorities should threads/tasks executing Berkeley DB functions be given?
Tasks executing Berkeley DB functions should have the same, or roughly equivalent, system priorities. For example, it can be dangerous to give tasks of control performing checkpoints a lower priority than tasks of control doing database lookups, and starvation can sometimes result.
Why isn't the C++ API exception safe?
The Berkeley DB C++ API is a thin wrapper around the C API that maps most return values to exceptions, and gives the C++ handles the same lifecycles as their C counterparts. One consequence is that if an exception occurs while a cursor or transaction handle is open, the application must explicitly close the cursor or abort the transaction.

Applications can be simplified and bugs avoided by creating wrapper classes around DBC and DB_TXN that call the appropriate cleanup method in the wrapper's destructor. By creating an instance of the wrappers on the stack, C++ scoping rules will ensure that the destructor is called before exception handling unrolls the block that contains the wrapper object.