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Database / SQLite Interview questions

What are the limitations of SQLite for large-scale, high-concurrency applications?

SQLite's design choices that make it excellent for embedded, single-application use become real constraints once an application needs many independent processes hammering the same database with heavy concurrent writes.

  • Single-writer limitation — only one write transaction can proceed at a time per database file, regardless of how many CPU cores are available.
  • No built-in network access — there's no client-server protocol, so remote clients can't connect to it directly the way they would to MySQL/PostgreSQL over a network.
  • No user/role-based access control — file-system permissions are the only access control SQLite itself provides.
  • Limited horizontal scaling — there's no built-in replication or sharding across multiple database files/servers.

These aren't flaws so much as deliberate tradeoffs for its target use case — a genuinely multi-user, high-write-concurrency backend is exactly the scenario a client-server database like PostgreSQL was built for, and pushing SQLite into that role usually means fighting against its core design rather than working with it.

What is SQLite's core concurrency limitation?
What access control mechanism does SQLite itself provide?

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What is SQLite? What are the key features of SQLite? How is SQLite different from client-server databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL? What is the file format of a SQLite database? What are the supported data types in SQLite? What is dynamic typing (type affinity) in SQLite? How do you create a table in SQLite? How do you insert data into a SQLite table? How do you query data from a SQLite table? How do you update a record in SQLite? How do you delete a record in SQLite? What is a PRIMARY KEY in SQLite? What is AUTOINCREMENT in SQLite? What is a UNIQUE constraint in SQLite? What is a FOREIGN KEY in SQLite and how do you enable it? What is the sqlite3 command-line shell used for? How do you create an index in SQLite? What is a NULL value in SQLite? What is the difference between CHAR, VARCHAR, and TEXT in SQLite? What is the ROWID in a SQLite table? What is an in-memory SQLite database? How do you back up a SQLite database? What is the PRAGMA statement used for? What is a VIEW in SQLite? What is a TRIGGER in SQLite? What is the difference between DELETE, TRUNCATE, and DROP in SQLite? What is a transaction in SQLite and how do you use BEGIN/COMMIT/ROLLBACK? What is the difference between WAL mode and rollback journal mode? Why does SQLite recommend enabling foreign keys explicitly, given they're off by default? What is the difference between INTEGER PRIMARY KEY and a regular PRIMARY KEY in SQLite? How does SQLite handle concurrent writes? What is the difference between a SQLite VIEW and a TABLE? How do you perform a JOIN in SQLite? What is an UPSERT in SQLite (INSERT... ON CONFLICT)? How do you use the EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN statement? What is a composite primary key in SQLite? How does SQLite handle database locking? What is the difference between VACUUM and ANALYZE in SQLite? Explain the internal working of SQLite's B-tree storage structure? How does WAL mode improve concurrency compared to the default rollback journal? Explain the lifecycle of a SQLite transaction from BEGIN to COMMIT? Why might full-text search (FTS5) be needed instead of a LIKE query? How do you optimize a slow SQLite query? What are the limitations of SQLite for large-scale, high-concurrency applications? How does SQLite ensure ACID compliance without a separate server process? Explain how SQLite's write-ahead logging (WAL) checkpoint process works? What isolation level does SQLite provide, compared to other RDBMS? What is the STRICT keyword used for in SQLite table definitions?
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