Collection of insane and fun facts about SQLite

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2024-12-30 15:00:02

SQLite is the most deployed and most used database. There are over one trillion (1000000000000 or a million million) SQLite databases in active use.

SQLite is likely used more than all other database engines combined. Billions and billions of copies of SQLite exist in the wild. It’s everywhere.

SQLite originated from a US warship. Dr. Richard Hipp (DRH) was building software for the USS Oscar Austin, a Navy destroyer. The existing software would just stop working whenever the server went down (this was in the 2000s). For a battleship, this was unacceptable.

SQLite is not open source in the legal sense, as “open source” has a specific definition and requires licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Contributing to SQLite is invite-only (I don’t have a source). Only after you are invited and have signed an affidavit dedicating your contribution to the public domain can you submit patches.

There are over 600 lines of test code for every line of code in SQLite. Tests cover 100% of branches (and 100% MC/DC) in the library. The test suite is extremely diverse, including fuzz tests, boundary value tests, regression tests, and tests that simulate operating system crashes, power losses, I/O errors, and out-of-memory errors.