&quot;Its embedded nature means that any &quot;client&quot; of a shared DB is free to deadlock the whole thing (if the client dies) or corrupt the database&#x27;s structure (if the client has a memory bug).<p>By the time you have a working robust multi-client system, you have completely reinvented half of what an RDBMS provides, since you will have pushed most functionality into a central server to avoid the lack of robustness its embedded nature brings,&quot;<p>Sounds very much to me like you are claiming that embedded designs by their nature lack robustness. BDB&#x27;s lack of robustness is due to its very specific design choices, not solely because it is an embedded data store.