Before continuing, it is useful to spend a few moments on exception handling in DB with the java.

Most DB methods throw DatabaseException in the event of a serious error. So your DB code must either catch this exception or declare it to be throwable. Be aware that DatabaseException extends java.lang.Exception. For example:

import com.sleepycat.db.DatabaseException;

    ...
try 
{
    // DB and other code goes here
}
catch(DatabaseException e)
{
  // DB error handling goes here
} 

You can obtain the DB error number for a DatabaseException by using DatabaseException.getErrno(). You can also obtain any error message associated with that error using DatabaseException.getMessage().