Using SQLite

How We Got Here

Taking a book from an idea to a finished product involves a great many people. Although my name is on the cover, this could not have been possible without all of their help.

First, I would like to acknowledge the friendship and support of my primary editor, Mike Loukides. Thanks to some mutual friends, I first started doing technical reviews for Mike over eight years ago. Through the years, Mike gently encouraged me to take on my own project.

The first step on that path came nearly three years ago. I had downloaded a set of database exports from the Wikipedia project and was trying to devise a minimal database configuration that would (hopefully) cram nearly all the current data onto a small flash storage card. The end goal was to provide a local copy of the Wikipedia articles on an ebook reader I had. SQLite was a natural choice. At some point, frustrated with trying to understand the correct call sequence, I threw my hands up and exclaimed, “Someone should write a book about this!”—Ding!—The proverbial light bulb went off, and many, many (many…) late nights later, here we are.

Behind Mike stands the whole staff of O’Reilly Media. Everyone I interacted with did their best to help me out, calm me down, and fix my problems—sometimes all at once. The production staff understands how to make life easy for the author, so that we can focus on writing and leave the details to someone else.

I would like to thank D. Richard Hipp, the creator and lead maintainer of SQLite. In ...