Berkeley DB Reference Guide:
  Access Methods

Database statistics

The DB->stat method returns a set of statistics about the underlying database, for example, the number of key/data pairs in the database, how the database was originally configured, and so on.

There is a flag you can set to avoid time-consuming operations:

DB_FAST_STAT

- Return only information that can be acquired without traversing the entire database.

Copyright (c) 1996,2008 Oracle. All rights reserved.