SQLite

SQLite is a C library, written by D. Richard Hipp and others, that implements an embeddable SQL database engine. Programs that link with the SQLite library can have SQL database access without running a separate RDBMS process. The distribution comes with a standalone command-line access program (sqlite) that can be used to administer an SQLite database and which serves as an example of how to use the SQLite library.

SQLite is not a client library used to connect to a big database server. SQLite is the server. The SQLite library reads and writes directly to and from the database files on disk.

SQLite is used by Mac OS X software such as NetNewsWire and SpamSieve.

When you download SQLite and build it on a stock Mac OS X system, the sqlite tool has a very primitive command-line editing facility. This build of sqlite uses the GNU readline library, which provides fancy command-line editing (using, e.g. Emacs key bindings) as well as a command history. Software built using the included libsqlite.a library does not link with readline and thus is not tainted by the GPL. The Makefile is available here.

You can download SQLite 2.8.16 for Mac OS X (387K) on a disk image or read the PDF documentation (52K), which is also included on the disk image.

New in version 2.8.16: