better-sqlite3 VS SQLite

In the second video of the series, we are separating routers and adding SQLite, Better SQLite 3, Database to the application to show access to context for performing a simple query and mutation.

If I were charged with this task I'd probably take an actual SQLite DB and write methods to parse data from text files, then process it within SQLite, and serialize it back to the text file when an API method is called or after each processing step. A fresh DB engine, fully re-implemented to match SQLite's API is insane unless you're a prodigy or have a sizable team and will come with numerous downsides. I can recommend https://github.com/WiseLibs/better-sqlite3 and https://github.com/loveencounterflow/dbay

better-sqlite3 is orders of magnitude faster than the async SQLite bindings. We found this to be true when testing SQLite options for Notion's desktop app anyways.

https://github.com/WiseLibs/better-sqlite3#why-should-i-use-...

Better SQLite is a wrapper around the SQLite database engine that provides a number of improvements over the standard SQLite API. One of those benefits is type safety, Better SQLite uses TypeScript to provide type safety for queries, which can help to prevent errors.

better-sqlite3 does the job synchronously

I used better-sqlite3 . It is simple to use as it is synchronous. I don't know if it scales good (at least the docs say it) but works great for my small use cases.

Kent's recommended NodeJS module, `better-sqlite3`, has some very nifty features including the creation of JavaScript user-defined functions[0] that (if I understand this right) can be called from SQLite. Combined with TRIGGERs, I wonder if it might fire a function within the app when an UPDATE/INSERT happens from a different process? (This is me wondering out loud, I don't actually know.)

I also recommend checking out Replicache[1] and alternatives, which may be a better way to handle the networking and database replication so that it doesn't rely on the underlying DB.

[0] https://github.com/WiseLibs/better-sqlite3/blob/HEAD/docs/ap...

If you are into alternative storage engines for SQLite, there is also an LSM (Log-Structured Merge-tree) extension in the main repository that is not announced nor documented but seems to work. It’s based on the SQLite 4 project.

https://github.com/sqlite/sqlite/tree/master/ext/lsm1

https://www.charlesleifer.com/blog/lsm-key-value-storage-in-...

The sqlite code base is really well done. Lots of documentation.

https://github.com/sqlite/sqlite

Especially the VM part: https://github.com/spandanb/learndb-py/blob/master/learndb/v...

Compare it with this: https://github.com/sqlite/sqlite/blob/master/src/vdbe.c

That's said, I'm curious how complete this LearnDB is. SQLite is hard to read not only it's old but also it covers a lot of SQL and following SQL spec makes hings complicated. SQLite has great test suite so it's nice if you run the suit against this implementation.

Correct, see the github mirror[1]. I don't know how well supported that feature is compared to main branch. If it was completely stable, then it would have already landed in the main stable branch. Clarity about the roadmap of that branch would be nice.

1. https://github.com/sqlite/sqlite/tree/begin-concurrent

Including comprehensive comments, documentation and tests in a codebase takes time and effort.

Failing to do so creates code that is very difficult to maintain or for someone new to the codebase to understand.

However, time and effort may not be what the organization wants to pay for, and individuals may view their own incomprehensible code as something like job security, as they can't be replaced by someone else easily.

As an example of complicated code that's still well-documented, the open-source sqlite code is a good example, about 1/4 of the B-tree file is comments, every time a variable is defined there's a short note explaining what it's used for, every function has a comment header that's comprehensive, such that someone new to the codebase could construct a map of how it all works fairly quickly. It's a good model for how to avoid the problem:

https://github.com/sqlite/sqlite/blob/master/src/btree.c