SQLite database larger than CSV flat file?

Question

I had expected that using SQLite would reduce the the total size of the data used, but actually I am seeing a CSV representation being 4mb smaller than the SQLite database.

The database contains a single table with 400,000 rows. The table has four columns.

The CSV file comes to 19MB and the SQLite database comes to 23MB. If this table was 10 times larger I would be better off parsing the CSV file rather than SQLite.

Why is the SQLite database larger than the CSV file?

Answer 1

There should be no expectation of the SQLite database file being smaller. The purpose of putting data in a database/table is to access that data according to business rules/SQL joins that are required. Indexes and other metadata like table definitions can easily explain the additional space requirements.