Book Review: Inside SQLite
Executive summary: 4.5 stars. A useful tutorial, a helpful reference and a definite keeper.A few weeks ago, the fine folks at O'Reilly were kind enough to send me a copy of Inside SQLite by Sibsankar Haldar. It's fairly short, as books go - only about 75 pages - but it's crammed with a ton of information.
It opens with a rather unhelpful overview of how to use SQLite in an application, which while probably required for completeness, is confusingly out of place. From there it jumps directly into deep SQLite internals, which is such a befuddling transition that for a while I was lost as to the purpose of the whole book. A few sections later, however, I figured out what the book was really about - internals.
As the title should have made clear.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think there is any information in this book that couldn't be obtained from the SQLite web site or mailing list archives. But it has two major advantages over those sources: first, all the information is in one place and second, that information is well organized. DRH does quite a good job of keeping everyone informed about all-things SQLite, but documentation is not, and can not, be his primary concern. That's reflected in the need for and usefulness of this book.
I do not think that this book will be useful to many people, as the common consumers of the SQLite library vastly outnumber the advanced users and internal hackers. But for those who do need to understand SQLite at all levels, whether it be for tuning purposes, advanced usage or in order to make internal modifications, this book is a fantastic way to get started. I certainly wish it had been available when I first started using SQLite.
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