FYI, if you're looking for a very, very well-written and well-tested C codebase to read, give SQLite a look.

Yep, that's true! For further information in regard to testing in SQLite have a look at How SQLite Is Tested, http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html

Zed Shaw was praising Fossil recently (http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1276624594.html) which was also written by SQLite author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Richard_Hipp).

Some additional links:

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433387

* http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=809493

Both TCL and Lua are sexy language implementations.

SQLite is one of the best software of all time.

I'm certainly finding that I'm using SQLite3 more and more in (certain) applications these days whereas before I just used it for quick prototyping and/or in my test suite.

It seems to be the default for developing webapps (coming from the Ruby world) and is just a nice little DBMS to use in any desktop app your happening to write.

I wrote a simple ATS and bug database app the otherday using Ruby Shoes, SQLite, and DataMapper. I just wanted a simple UI for entering bugs, there's only me (at the moment), and I wanted it as a single exe, and I only want Ruby (essentially I'm lazy).

Worked a treat. I think SQLites neato,dead handy for data persistence thats cross platform.

Its also very popular in the Perl world. The DBD::SQLite (driver) CPAN module even comes packaged with SQLite: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-SQLite/

It's also available compiled for MIPS and running under a pure Java MIPs emulator for cross-platform Java software.

http://www.zentus.com/sqlitejdbc/

If you need a pure-Java solution for a fast SQL database without needing T-SQL or Oracle, it's a great solution.

OT: I have a cousin who owns/runs an IT Business in Clontarf, Dublin! (Although I see that according to Hackernewsers you're actually based in China).

I have a fair idea of two buildings(is it the one with African Gold? And if so, do you know Spoof?) they might be in(otherwise it's the one beside the Guardi station). I did live in Clontarf...most of my life until a little over a year ago when I emigrated, because... we'll no work and my wife wanted to come home.

Unfortunately its not African Gold but it is on the same road!

Its been a while since I was in contact with my cousin... so much so that I've only just noticed he's rebranded/rebooted the business (though still at same address): http://www.diaryplan.com/

"WAL provides more concurrency as readers do not block writers and a writer does not block readers."

Excellent! This is the one feature that I missed before.

WAL is quite exciting indeed. And most of the items listed as disadvantages of WAL [1] are probably non-issues for most people; except maybe:

> 5. It is not possible to open read-only WAL databases. The opening process must have write privileges for "-shm" wal-index shared memory file associated with the database, if that file exists, or else write access on the directory containing the database file if the "-shm" file does not exist.

> 7. There is an additional quasi-persistent "-wal" file and "-shm" shared memory file associated with each database, which can make SQLite less appealing for use as an application file-format.

And in Backwards Compatibility [1]:

> To prevent older versions of SQLite from trying to recover a WAL-mode database (and making matters worse) the database file format version numbers (bytes 18 and 19 in the database header) are increased from 1 to 2 in WAL mode. Thus, if an older version of SQLite attempts to connect to an SQLite database that is operating in WAL mode, it will report an error along the lines of "file is encrypted or is not a database".

[1] http://www.sqlite.org/wal.html

We've been waiting for it to put in to swift (openstack storage) since we heard about it. It should really help performance on container and account operations.

This FLOSS Weekly podcast of SQLite maybe of interest: http://www.twit.tv/floss26

Its from early 2008 but I found the discussion on public domain fascinating.