A few weeks ago I noticed that the new version of Yahoo! Widgets/Konfabulator now supports an embedded client database, SQLite. This got the gears in my brain whirring — what could you do with a desktop widget that sports a embedded database engine? Converting the Approver.com desktop widget into something more functional (maybe with the ability to replicate files from client to server) comes to mind, but there are tons of other things you could do.
The interesting new Google Gears product also rocks SQLite (as a way to facilitate the creation of offline web applications). Not to be outdone, Mike Chambers of Adobe blogged last night that the Apollo beta will also sport SQLite.
There’s definitely something here worth looking into more deeply. SQLite is a mature technology that’s been around for a while, but it seems like it has really reached a tipping point in the last month or so with these high profile adoptions. (To complete the cycle, Microsoft must now announce that they are going to release their own, incompatible embedded database product to be released in 18 months with performance and ease-of-programming characteristics that are both slightly worse than that of SQLite and a cost of $129 per desktop.)
I’m kidding, of course — .NET developers actually have a very interesting option for using SQLite — a free library called System.Data.SQLite. Built on top of the SQLite engine, it combines the SQLite engine and an ADO.NET 2.0 provider for SQLite into a single .NET component. This is a very slick idea — at the end of the summer I need to do a VSLive session on building data-driven web site and I may just use SQLite as my database engine. That way I’ll be able to distribute my demo code for people to run themselves with zero configuration.
Update: The next version of Firefox will support SQLite for offline applications bookmark storage.
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I was quite surprised the other day to discover that Adobe Lightroom uses SQL-Lite to store all of the metadata and changes you’ve made your images.
Check out Microsoft’s Sql Server CE – it’s been around for *years*, and supports many more features than SQLite (ie, foreign keys). Currently on version 3.5.