Can SQLite support multiple users?

Question

I am trying to develop a Windows based application with multiple users accessing the same database at the same time. Can SQLite support multiple accesses at one time? Is SQLite stable in this regard? What makes SQLite better or worse than MS SQL CE?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes SQLite can support multiple users at once. It does however lock the whole database when writing, so if you have lots of concurrent writes it is not the database you want (usually the time the database is locked is a few milliseconds - so for most uses this does not matter). But it is very well tested and very stable (and widely used) so you can trust it.

You may read this short document for information when to use SQLite and not: http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html

Answer 2

If concurrent writes are an issue, you may want to look at Berkeley DB. The SQL API is completely SQLite compatible. In fact, it incorporates the SQLite executor top of Berkeley DB's storage engine, which does support multiple concurrent write operations.