I thought bsddb was not actually shipped with CPython, and had to be manually built (which was a pain and would invariably fail, IIRC). I guess people were supposed to check source docs.
No, not really. This is what happens in my normal Python installation in Windows:
Python 2.7.5 (default, May 15 2013, 22:43:36) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win 32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from bsddb import db
>>> print db.DB_VERSION_STRING
Berkeley DB 4.7.25: (May 15, 2008)
>>>
And this[1] works completely. Just replace bsddb3 with bsddb.
[1] http://code.activestate.com/recipes/189060-using-berkeley-db...