--- src/vdbe.c
+++ src/vdbe.c
@@ -2327,7 +2327,9 @@
         assert( rc==SQLITE_OK );   /* DataSize() cannot fail */
         pC->aRow = sqlite3BtreeDataFetch(pCrsr, &avail);
       }
-      assert( avail<=65536 );  /* Maximum page size is 64KiB */
+      /* The BDB version can return data items larger than the largest page.
+      ** assert( avail<=65536 );
+      */
       if( pC->payloadSize <= (u32)avail ){
         pC->szRow = pC->payloadSize;
       }else{
@@ -3296,9 +3298,10 @@
   assert( OPFLAG_BULKCSR==BTREE_BULKLOAD );
   sqlite3BtreeCursorHints(pCur->pCursor, (pOp->p5 & OPFLAG_BULKCSR));
 
-  /* Since it performs no memory allocation or IO, the only value that
-  ** sqlite3BtreeCursor() may return is SQLITE_OK. */
-  assert( rc==SQLITE_OK );
+  /* The BDB version of sqlite3BtreeCursor() performs disk i/o and memory 
+  ** allocations and so may return an error, so this assert is not valid. 
+  ** assert( rc==SQLITE_OK );
+  */
 
   /* Set the VdbeCursor.isTable variable. Previous versions of
   ** SQLite used to check if the root-page flags were sane at this point