Manish’s Scribble Board

TechTatva Day 2 and 3 were quite wonderful in itself. Our events under Param are very unique this time and maybe first of its type. Only one day is left for the fest which marks the concluding ceremony (there is no real closing ceremony)

Day 2 was relatively free since it only had Jour starting at 6PM night which is intended to be a 24 hour event. The submission time was 10th of Oct, 6PM which was later extended to 7PM. We recieved total of 8 submissions out of which maybe 5 would be called for final round where they have to give a presentation of their application developed. The organizers are currently busy with the shortlisting.

This day marked the most unique event in the history of Param - MobiVision finals. I only hear about Mobile Programming in IIT’s and other college which only focus on J2ME and no other platform. In our college we allowed all platforms. Android workshop was held before the second sessionals and I think no other college in our country might have had Android Programming workshop till now.

The results of MobiVision are out. Congratulations to the prize winners. Check out my flickr photostream for more pics relating to TechTatva

So finally after a long wait am posting something technical on this personal blog. Last year, means last week of December , I was experimenting a bit on SQLite which is actually a database software. Unlike server-client model of other database softwares like Oracle and MySQL, it is actually a flat file database which can be embedded within any application software. No need of of a database software running as a server!

Some more info about SQLite : SQLite is ideally suited for embedded systems like media players, mobile phones and other small softwares which need to maintain their own data properly. Using a database server would make it dependent and an additional server load would have to be met. Instead SQLite is a flat file database where the database software is embedded inside the host software itself and all API calls are made and received inside the application itself. The data is stored on the file. Since it is unlike the traditional database software, SQLite depends heavily on the Operating System on which it is running for functionality like file locking (reader/writer locks) and user authentication.

SQLite is used vastly and the developers claim that it is the most widely deployed database software. Firefox uses SQLite to maintain its data, the Android mobile platform from Open Handset Alliance of which Google is a part also uses SQLite. Symbian also use it in its high-end mobile Operating System. Check for more deployments of this product.

The source code of SQLite is in Public Domain, so feel free to use it without any hesitation, no licensing terms are going to bound you. Its very very liberal.

I have finally completed experimenting it for PHP, C and C++ languages. It has binding for more languages like Python, Ruby and more, but sorry I dont know much about Ruby, only a bit about Python. I may soon make a post on my Technical Blog on installing and using SQLite for C/C++, using it with PHP is damn simple. And a note: The post will be aimed at installing it on Linux not windows.

Update on 3rd January (7:36 PM): Here is the post on SQLite. This tutorial is the best for a beginner, dont refer more functions in the beginning as you can get confused. Even though the manual on the site is good, examples are lacking, which I have given in this post. Have Fun! Click Here