SQLite

CSE373
 Outline

Introduction to SQL
SQLite
SQLite Shell
SQLite From A Program
An example in Java
Conclusions
SQL
 Quick Introduction To SQL

The Structured Query Language (SQL) is a programming

language designed to interact with relational databases
The SQL anagram can be pronounced either S-Q-L or sequel
SQL is designed to work with databases that are composed of
tables
The columns are data typed fields
The rows are instances of data
Relationships can be established between the columns of tables
The formal description of the names and structure of the
tables in a database is called a schema
Often the schema is the series of SQL statements that create the tables,
relationships and constraints
 Quick Introduction To SQL

There are four basic functions of any storage system (CRUD)

Create
Read
Update
Delete
The statements in SQL that support CRUD are:
CREATE TABLE - Create
INSERT - Create
SELECT - Read
UPDATE – Update
ALTER TABLE - Update
DELETE – Delete
DROP - Delete
 SQL – CREATE TABLE

The CREATE TABLE statement is used in SQL to create a

new table in a database

CREATE TABLE My_table(

my_field1 INT,
my_field2 VARCHAR(50),
my_field3 DATE NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (my_field1, my_field2)
);
 SQL – Primary And Foreign Keys

Primary keys are a constraint on a table that specifies that the

columns (or column) that are specified as the primary key
must have a unique combination for each row in the table
Usually we are using the primary key as the identifying information for a
row. For example {Student ID}, {SSN}, {Name, Date of Birth, Phone number}
can all be primary keys that would identify a person in a database
Foreign keys are relationships between the columns of two
tables that act as constraint stating that the combination of
the values of the columns in the foreign key must exist in the
primary key of another table
Usually this is used to state the row in the table with the foreign key is the
same entity as the row in the table with the primary key
 SQL - INSERT

The INSERT statement is add rows to the a table in a

database

INSERT INTO My_table

(field1, field2, field3)
VALUES
('test', 'N', 8/21/2013);
 SQL - SELECT

The SELECT statement is used to send query to a database

and obtained results for the query

SELECT * FROM My_table;

SELECT (my_field1, my_field3)

FROM My_table
WHERE
my_field1 > 12
AND myField2 = ‘Bob’;
 SQL - UPDATE

The UPDATE statement is used to change the value of

field in a row in the database

UPDATE My_table
SET field1 = 0
WHERE field2 = 'N';
 SQL – ALTER TABLE

The ALTER TABLE statement is used to change the

structure of a table

ALTER TABLE My_table

ADD my_field4 NUMBER(3) NOT NULL;

ALTER TABLE My_table

DROP my_field1;
 SQL - DELETE

The DELETE statement is used to delete rows from table

in the database

DELETE FROM My_table

WHERE field2 = 'N';

The TRUNCATE TABLE statement is used to quickly delete

all data in a table

TRUNCATE TABLE My_table;

 SQL - DROP

The DROP statement is used to delete a table from the

database

DROP TABLE My_table;

 More SQL

SQL is a fairly large language and has a lot features and a

lot of syntax
Some important features that weren’t covered include
Procedures
Constraints
Permissions
This was just meant as a quick crash course to provide the
bare bones of what is needed to go over a pretty neat
database system
SQLite
 Database Systems

There are a number of database systems that you use

including mySQL, Oracle, SQLServer, and PostgreSQL
Most of these databases are designed to be running all
the time and run as a separate process
What if we don’t want or need the database to be
running all the time? Or what if we are only storing data
for a single user in a single application ?
 SQLite

SQLite is a very lightweight C library that allows SQL

queries to sent to a local flat file
Can be pronounced either S-Q-L-lite or Sequel-lite
Additionally, since SQLite is a library it doesn’t run as a
separate process but rather is invoked from another
program
SQLite is accessible from most programming
languages(maybe all)
The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and so
it is viewable and modifiable
 Uses Of SQLite

Arguably SQLite is the most commonly used database in

the world
Most SQLite users aren’t aware they are using it
Firefox, Chrome, Safari and other web browsers
Store bookmarks, settings, browsing history
Android and iOS
Email Readers
Emails, Contact Lists
Microsoft has a similar system that it uses for the same
purposes
 SQL In SQLite

At this point SQLite supports almost all of SQL

There are some missing features in joins, altering tables,
triggers, and supporting permissions
In my experience there is also some places where SQLite
can be somewhat strange
SQLite wont enforce foreign keys unless you tell it to every time you
access the database
The documentation for SQLite is pretty comprehensive
http://www.sqlite.org/docs.html
 SQLite Datatypes

SQLite only has five datatypes

NULL – For null values
INTEGER – A 1 to 8 byte signed integer
REAL – An 8byte floating point values
TEXT – A text string
BLOB – Data that stored in such a way that it is unchanged for how it
was input
Any other datatype you want to support needs to
modified to fit into one of these datatypes
Boolean – Usually an integer is used
Date/Time – Built-in date/time functions can be used to store them
in TEXT, REAL or INTEGER formats
The SQLite Shell
 SQLite Shell

SQLite provides an executable command line shell that

can be used to create and interact with a SQLite database
directly
The pre-compiled shell can be obtained off the
downloads on the SQLite homepage for Windows, Linux
and OS X
http://www.sqlite.org/download.html
The shell is portable and so doesn’t require any
installation or installed libraries
 SQLite Shell

There are several commands available from within the

shell including:
.databases – lists all the currently loaded databases
.schema – lists the schema for the database(s)
.tables – lists the names of all tables
.read – will execute the SQL in the specified file
.echo – repeats the commands inputted
.quit – quits the shell
.help – lists all commands
 SQLite Data Browser

Creating a new SQLite database is as easy as creating a new

file
SQLite doesn’t enforce any requirements on the file extension for a SQLite
database
Popular file extensions include .db and .sqlite3 or no extension at all
Opening a SQLite database with the shell involves providing
the file name as a command line argument
sqlite3 mydb.sqlite
If you are already in the shell you can use:
attach “mydb.sqlite” as db1;
Once you are in the shell you can then start entering and
executing SQL queries and statements
SQLite From A Program
 SQLite From A Program

SQLite provides a C/C++ as well as a Tcl API

There are numerous bindings that allow SQLite to be used
from just about any programming language
Java
Python
.Net
Javascript
The SQLite wiki maintains a list of bindings by language
http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=SqliteWrappers
 SQLite From A Program

I’m going to go over a simple example of how to use Java

to interact with a SQLite database
I used a simple JDBC driver to interface with SQLite
https://bitbucket.org/xerial/sqlite-jdbc
There are other ways to use SQLite from Java
 Installing The Driver In Eclipse

First we download the .jar file for the driver

“sqlite-jdbc-3.7.2-javadoc.jar”
Place the .jar into a directory named “lib” in the project’s
directory
Refresh the project in Eclipse
Right click on the project in the package explorer
Now we are ready to start using SQLite
 Using SQLite

Lets take a walk through the code for a simple example

 Conclusions

SQLite is a very simple and easy to use database system

It allows for very portable databases and drops the
requirement of a database system running around the
clock
It can be accessed from just about any programming
language or just from a command line shell
Questions?