Professional Support & Extension Products

Support (details below)

Licenses (details below)

Special Services (details below)

Further Information

SQLite is free and works great. Most people use SQLite without any kind of license or support.

Free support for SQLite is available on the public SQLite Forum. The forum is monitored by a large community of experts, including the core SQLite development team, who are able to resolve just about any problems with SQLite that you are likely to have.

If you do not want to discuss your issues on a public and open forum, an Annual Maintenance Subscription or "AMS" might serve your needs better. An AMS entitles you to private email support directly from the developers of SQLite. The level of support with an AMS is similar to the support one gets from the public forum except that an AMS includes a unilateral promise of non-disclosure, so with an AMS you can discuss your issues with the SQLite developers in private, without the whole world watching. An AMS costs $1500 per year.

Users with more advanced support needs can opt for a Technical Support Agreement. Technical support agreements are customized to the needs of each individual client, but generally include direct telephone support and priority handling of issues and bugs. Guaranteed response time is available as an option. The cost of technical support varies but is generally in the range of $8000 to $35000 per year.

If SQLite is "mission critical" to your company, then you may want to become an SQLite Consortium Member. The SQLite Consortium is a collaboration of companies who sponsor ongoing development of SQLite in exchange for enterprise-level technical support, on-site visits from the SQLite developers, unlimited access to all licensed products, and strong guarantees that SQLite will remain in the public domain, free and independent, and will not come under the control of a competitor.

Software Licenses

The SQLite source code is in the public domain, and is free for use by anyone and for any purpose. No license is required. However, some users desire a license so that they can have warranty of title, or just because their company lawyers say they need one. A perpetual license and warranty of title for the core SQLite source code is available for this purpose.

The SQLite Encryption Extension (SEE), the ZIPVFS Extension, and the Compressed and Encrypted ReadOnly Database (CEROD) extension are enhanced versions of SQLite that handle encrypted and/or compressed databases. SEE can read and write encrypted databases. SEE encrypts all database content, including metadata, so that the database file appears as white noise. ZIPVFS compresses the database on-the-fly using application-supplied compression and decompression functions. CEROD reads a compressed database that is also optionally encrypted. All of SEE, ZIPVFS, and CEROD are supplied in source code form only; the licensee is responsible for compiling the products for their chosen platform. It is not difficult to compile any of these extension. All products come in the form of an {amalgamated source file} named "sqlite3.c". So compiling SEE, ZIPVFS, or CEROD into an application is simply a matter of substituting the SEE-, ZIPVFS-, or CEROD-enabled sqlite3.c source file in place of the public-domain sqlite3.c source file and recompiling. Licenses for SEE, ZIPVFS, and CEROD are perpetual. All three extension can read and write ordinary, uncompressed and unencrypted database files.

Testing Services

The Test Harness #3 (TH3) is a suite of test cases for SQLite that provide 100% branch test coverage (and 100% modified condition/decision coverage) for the core SQLite in an as-deployed configuration using only published and documented interfaces. TH3 is designed for use with embedded devices, and is compatible with DO-178B. Every release of the public-domain SQLite is tested using TH3, and so all users benefit from the TH3 tests. But the TH3 tests are not themselves public. Hardware or system manufactures who want to have TH3 test run on their systems can negotiate a service agreement to have the SQLite Developers run those tests.

About The SQLite Team

Paid support options and products are provided by Hipp, Wyrick & Company, Inc., (Hwaci), a Georgia corporation with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina and has been in business since 1992. Hwaci has an international team of employees and associates representing the best available talent. We are a 100% engineering company. There is no sales staff. Our goal is to provide outstanding service and honest advice without spin or sales-talk.

Hwaci is a small company but it is also closely held and debt-free and has low fixed costs, which means that it is largely immune to buy-outs, take-overs, and market down-turns. Hwaci intends to continue operating in its current form, and at roughly its current size until at least the year 2050. We expect to be here when you need us, even if that need is many years in the future.