Sqlite over a network share [closed]

Answer 1

You asked for real-world experience. Here's some:

SQLite locking is robust, ASSUMING the underlying (networked) file system is also robust. Historically, that's been a poor assumption. Recent operating systems get it much better.

If you play by the rules, your biggest problem will be cases where the database stays "locked" for many minutes at a stretch. For example, if the network drops an "unlock" request from a reader, you might be unable to write until the lock expires. If an "unlock" from a writer goes missing, you'll be unable to read. (To be fair, you can experience the same problems with ordinary documents.)

You'll get fewer problems on a good reliable network with "opportunistic locking" (client-level file caching) disabled for the database.

Answer 2

Well I am not great sqlite expert but I believe the Locking of records/tables may not work correctly and may make database corrupt. Because since there is no single server which maintains central locking, two sqlite dll instances on different machines sharing same file over network may not work correctly at all. If database is opened on same machine, sqlite may use file level locking offered by OS to maintain integrity but I doubt if it works correctly over network share.

Answer 3

"If you have many client programs accessing a common database over a network, you should consider using a client/server database engine instead of SQLite. SQLite will work over a network filesystem, but because of the latency associated with most network filesystems, performance will not be great. Also, the file locking logic of many network filesystems implementation contains bugs (on both Unix and Windows). If file locking does not work like it should, it might be possible for two or more client programs to modify the same part of the same database at the same time, resulting in database corruption. Because this problem results from bugs in the underlying filesystem implementation, there is nothing SQLite can do to prevent it."

from https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html

that also applies for any kind of file-based databases like Microsoft Access

Answer 4

My experience of file based databases (i.e. those without a database server process), which goes back over twenty years, is that if you try to share them, they will inevitably eventually get corrupted. I'd strongly suggest you look at MySQL again.

And please note, I am not picking on SQLite - I use it myself, just not as a shared database.