You could also just try removing the package and re-installing it after the update... It's quite likely though that it has been replaced with something like libdb3.2 or libdb4...
That's just a wild guess. I don't know what that package does. But rather than installing an alien one, I would remove it and than re-installing it. Hopefully it's not vital to the system
Well, there's always chroot.
Again, if you really need to update - if you want some new feature, do it. If you're just doing it because you can, I would wait until support runs out for 7.10.