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Sqinn

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Sqinn-Go is a Go (Golang) library for accessing SQLite databases without cgo. It uses Sqinn https://github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn under the hood. It starts Sqinn as a child process (os/exec) and communicates with Sqinn over stdin/stdout/stderr. The Sqinn child process then does the SQLite work.

If you want SQLite but do not want cgo, Sqinn-Go can be a solution.

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Usage

$ go get -u github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn-go/sqinn

import "github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn-go/sqinn"

// Simple sqinn-go usage. Error handling is left out for brevity.
func main() {

	// Launch sqinn. Terminate at program exit.
	sq := sqinn.MustLaunch(sqinn.Options{})
	defer sq.Terminate()

	// Open database. Close when we're done.
	sq.MustOpen("./users.db")
	defer sq.Close()

	// Create a table.
	sq.MustExecOne("CREATE TABLE users (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, name VARCHAR)")

	// Insert users.
	sq.MustExecOne("INSERT INTO users (id, name) VALUES (1, 'Alice')")
	sq.MustExecOne("INSERT INTO users (id, name) VALUES (2, 'Bob')")

	// Query users.
	rows := sq.MustQuery("SELECT id, name FROM users ORDER BY id", nil, []byte{sqinn.ValInt, sqinn.ValText})
	for _, row := range rows {
		fmt.Printf("id=%d, name=%s\n", row.Values[0].AsInt(), row.Values[1].AsString())
	}

	// Output:
	// id=1, name=Alice
	// id=2, name=Bob
}

Before running that program, Sqinn must be installed on your system. The most convenient way is to download a pre-built binary from https://github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn/releases and put it somewhere on your $PATH, or %PATH% on Windows.

If you want to store the Sqinn binary in a non-PATH folder, you must specify it when opening a Sqinn connection:

    // take from environment...
    sq := sqinn.MustLaunch(sqinn.Options{
        SqinnPath: os.Getenv("SQINN_PATH"),
    })

    // ...or set path directly
    sq := sqinn.MustLaunch(sqinn.Options{
        SqinnPath: "/path/to/sqinn",
    })

If you do not want to use a pre-built Sqinn binary, you can compile Sqinn yourself. See https://github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn for instructions.

For more usage examples, see file sqinn/sqinn_examples_test.go.

Pros and Cons

Advantages

Disadvantages

Performance

Performance tests show that Sqinn-Go performance is comparable to cgo solutions, depending on the use case.

For benchmarks I used github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3 and crawshaw.io/sqlite. Numbers are given in milliseconds, lower numbers are better.

                   mattn  crawshaw     sqinn
simple/insert       2901      2140      1563
simple/query        2239      1287      1390
complex/insert      2066      1817      1683
complex/query       1458      1129      1338
many/N=10             97        78       134
many/N=100           246       194       276
many/N=1000         1797      1240      1436
large/N=2000         119        87       341
large/N=4000         361       322       760
large/N=8000         701       650      1531
concurrent/N=2      1332       865       951    
concurrent/N=4      1505       989      1207    
concurrent/N=8      2347      1557      2044

See https://github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn-go-bench for details.

Testing

Sqinn-Go comes with a large set of automated unit tests. Follow these steps to execute all tests on linux_amd64:

Download and Install Sqinn

$ cd /tmp
$ curl -sL https://github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn/releases/download/v1.1.27/dist-linux.zip >> dist-linux.zip && unzip dist-linux.zip
$ export SQINN_PATH=/tmp/sqinn

Get and test Sqinn-Go

$ go get -v -u github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn-go/sqinn
$ go test github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn-go/sqinn

Check test coverage

$ go test github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn-go/sqinn -coverprofile=./cover.out
$ go tool cover -func=./cover.out
$ go tool cover -html=./cover.out

Test coverage is ~85% (as of 2021-03-27)

Discussion

Go without cgo

Sqinn-Go is Go without cgo, as it does not use cgo, nor does it depend on third-party cgo packages. However, Sqinn-Go has a runtime dependency on Sqinn, which is a program written in C. Sqinn has to be installed separately on each machine where a Sqinn-Go application is executing. For this to work, Sqinn has to be compiled for every target platform. As an alternative, pre-built Sqinn binaries for common platforms can be downloaded from the Sqinn releases page https://github.com/cvilsmeier/sqinn/releases.

No database/sql driver

Database/sql is Go's default abstraction layer for SQL databases. It is widely used and there are many third-party packages built on top of it. Sqinn-Go does not implement the database/sql interfaces. The reason is that the sql package provides low-level function calls to prepare statements, bind parameters, fetch column values, and so on. Sqinn could do that, too. But, since for every function call, Sqinn-Go has to make a inter-process communication request/response roundtrip to a sqinn child process, this would be very slow. Instead, Sqinn-Go provides higher-level Exec/Query interfaces that should be used in favor of low-level fine-grained functions.

Concurrency

Sqinn/Sqinn-Go performs well in non-concurrent as well as concurrent settings, as shown in the Performance section. However, a single Sqinn instance should only be called from one goroutine. Exceptions are the Exec and Query methods, these are mutex'ed and goroutine safe. But, since Sqinn is inherently single-threaded, Exec and Query requests are served one-after-another.

If you want true concurrency at the database level, you can spin up multiple Sqinn instances. You may even implement a connection pool. But be aware that when accessing a SQLite database concurrently, the dreaded SQLITE_BUSY error might occur. The PRAGMA busy_timeout might help to avoid SQLITE_BUSY errors.

We recommend the following: Have one Sqinn instance. You may call Exec/Query on that single Sqinn instance from as many goroutines as you want. For long-running tasks (VACUUM, BACKUP, etc), spin up a second Sqinn instance on demand, and terminate it once the long-running work is done. Use PRAGMA busy_timeout to avoid SQLITE_BUSY.

Only one active statement at a time

A Sqinn instance allows only one active statement at a time. A statement is active from the time it is prepared until it is finalized. Before preparing a new statement, you have to finalize the current statement first, otherwise Sqinn will respond with an error.

This is why we recommend using Exec/Query: These methods do a complete prepare-finalize cycle and the caller can be sure that, once Exec/Query returns, no active statements are hanging around.

Changelog

v1.2.0 (2023-10-05)

v1.1.2 (2021-05-27)

v1.1.1 (2021-03-27)

v1.1.0 (2020-06-14)

v1.0.0 (2020-06-10)

License

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.

In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this software under copyright law.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

For more information, please refer to https://unlicense.org