Is it possible to back a readonly SQLite database with a memory buffer (or PE resource)?

Question

I would like to embed a reasonably large chunk of data stored in a SQLite database into my binary using Windows' "custom resources" feature. (This is a whitelist for a logging tool) SQLite does come with support for in memory databases, but it looks like that may be limited to creating completely new databases; and does not seem to support reading from a memory buffer; but I'm not positive.

Does the database support anything like this? (I have to embed SQLite for other reasons, so it'd be awesome to use it for whitelists too...)

Answer 1

The online backup section of sqlite documentation http://www.sqlite.org/backup.html has some code that might do what you want (i.e. dump in memory db to file, or reload a file into an in memory db). That should allow you do save you pre-indexed db into a file that you can add to your resources and load in memory at run-time.

This is the code in question (copied straight from the page linked above)

/*
** This function is used to load the contents of a database file on disk 
** into the "main" database of open database connection pInMemory, or
** to save the current contents of the database opened by pInMemory into
** a database file on disk. pInMemory is probably an in-memory database, 
** but this function will also work fine if it is not.
**
** Parameter zFilename points to a nul-terminated string containing the
** name of the database file on disk to load from or save to. If parameter
** isSave is non-zero, then the contents of the file zFilename are 
** overwritten with the contents of the database opened by pInMemory. If
** parameter isSave is zero, then the contents of the database opened by
** pInMemory are replaced by data loaded from the file zFilename.
**
** If the operation is successful, SQLITE_OK is returned. Otherwise, if
** an error occurs, an SQLite error code is returned.
*/
int loadOrSaveDb(sqlite3 *pInMemory, const char *zFilename, int isSave){
  int rc;                   /* Function return code */
  sqlite3 *pFile;           /* Database connection opened on zFilename */
  sqlite3_backup *pBackup;  /* Backup object used to copy data */
  sqlite3 *pTo;             /* Database to copy to (pFile or pInMemory) */
  sqlite3 *pFrom;           /* Database to copy from (pFile or pInMemory) */

  /* Open the database file identified by zFilename. Exit early if this fails
  ** for any reason. */
  rc = sqlite3_open(zFilename, &pFile);
  if( rc==SQLITE_OK ){

    /* If this is a 'load' operation (isSave==0), then data is copied
    ** from the database file just opened to database pInMemory. 
    ** Otherwise, if this is a 'save' operation (isSave==1), then data
    ** is copied from pInMemory to pFile.  Set the variables pFrom and
    ** pTo accordingly. */
    pFrom = (isSave ? pInMemory : pFile);
    pTo   = (isSave ? pFile     : pInMemory);

    /* Set up the backup procedure to copy from the "main" database of 
    ** connection pFile to the main database of connection pInMemory.
    ** If something goes wrong, pBackup will be set to NULL and an error
    ** code and  message left in connection pTo.
    **
    ** If the backup object is successfully created, call backup_step()
    ** to copy data from pFile to pInMemory. Then call backup_finish()
    ** to release resources associated with the pBackup object.  If an
    ** error occurred, then  an error code and message will be left in
    ** connection pTo. If no error occurred, then the error code belonging
    ** to pTo is set to SQLITE_OK.
    */
    pBackup = sqlite3_backup_init(pTo, "main", pFrom, "main");
    if( pBackup ){
      (void)sqlite3_backup_step(pBackup, -1);
      (void)sqlite3_backup_finish(pBackup);
    }
    rc = sqlite3_errcode(pTo);
  }

  /* Close the database connection opened on database file zFilename
  ** and return the result of this function. */
  (void)sqlite3_close(pFile);
  return rc;
}