Do dpkg and apt use the same database?

[news.spiegl@kascada.com (Andy Spiegl)]

According to E.L. Meijer \(Eric\) <tgakem@sg10.chem.tue.nl>:
> 
> Dselect and dpkg and apt all use the same db.

Are you sure?  When I do a "apt-get update" followed by a "dpkg -l ..."
I sometimes do not get the same as when I do "dselect, Update" first?
I have the feeling that dselect does one more thing.  What supports
this feeling is that "apt-get update" says:

 Get [blabla]
 Updating package file cache...done
 Updating package status cache...done
 Checking system integrity...ok

whereas Update in dselect gives me:

 Get [...]
 Updating package file cache...done
 Updating package status cache...done
 Checking system integrity...ok
 Merging Available information
 Replacing available packages info, using /var/cache/apt/available.
 Information about 2779 package(s) was updated.

Does anyone know how to do everything with apt-get only, so that
dpkg still has the correct information?  Is it as simple as
copying /var/cache/apt/available to /var/lib/dpkg/available ?

Thanks a lot,
 Andy.

-- 
 Andy Spiegl, University of Technology, Muenchen, Germany
 E-Mail: Andy@spiegl.de     URL: http://www.spiegl.de
 Finger pgp.andy@spiegl.de for my PGP key
                                o      _     _         _
  --------- __o       __o      /\_   _ \\o  (_)\__/o  (_)
  ------- _`\<,_    _`\<,_    _>(_) (_)/<_    \_| \   _|/' \/
  ------ (_)/ (_)  (_)/ (_)  (_)        (_)   (_)    (_)'  _\o_
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~