[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: SQLite

[Ralph Green]

On Sun, 2010-09-12 at 15:00 -0500, Fred James wrote:
> I am seeking comment ... why would I not want to use SQLite?  Of course, 
Howdy,
 SQLite is great for lots of things.  I have used it in several small
applications and it did everything I needed.

 As Stuart says, one real problem is that writes need to be single
threaded in some way.  And, I think these writes create locks that slow
down reads.  If all you are doing is adding new records with the writes,
you are fine, though.

  I'll give you a couple of reasons I think it could be a problem.  If
anyone can comment and tell me I am wrong on these, then great.  SQLite
seems to be memory bound.  I have some tables I have created recently
that were hundreds of megabytes in size and soon will be gigabytes.  I
don't want that all in memory.  I am also doing data mining on the
tables and I am building some fairly complex select statements.  I had
no problems with Postgresql, but I think SQLite is much more limited.

 Even with those limits, SQLite is fine for most single user apps.
SQLite is built into lots of things.  Being public domain is as open as
you can get.  I still like GPL better, but public domain is certainly
safe to use.  Recent Python releases have it built in, so you don't have
to worry about whether a user has the database software loaded.
Have a good day,
Ralph