If you are on Windows/NT or Windows, you can build a shared library version of Berkeley DB by opening the build_win32/Berkeley_DB.dsw workspace and selecting target DB_DLL. Set the configuration to Win32 Debug, and build. Make sure there is a build_win32/Debug/libdb.dll as a result.
If you are using a UNIX platform, you will need to do a little extra work to build a shared library version of Berkeley DB DB. By default, Berkeley DB builds as a static library. If you've already built Berkeley DB, you can copy your build directory to use as a work space, e.g.:
% cd db-VERSION % cp -r build_unix build_shlib % cd build_shlib % make clean
Now you'll need to consult your system documentation to understand how to build Berkeley DB as a shared library. As UNIX architectures do not all build shared libraries the same way, Berkeley DB is not distributed with support for building shared libraries.
Examples for building shared library versions of Berkeley DB are available for HP/UX and the generic GCC compiler. If you build a shared library version of Berkeley DB for a compiler and architecture combination for which we do not have an example, please email the procedure to us, and we'll add it to the collection.