There are likely >1e12 SQLite databases on Earth | Hacker News Reader

There are likely >1e12 SQLite databases on Earth

sqlite.org

96 pointsOgsyedIE14 comments

Man i love SQLite. I hate that one of my professors in university was an idiot that didn't really know anything he was talking about told us on many occasions that SQLite was just a toy database that wasn't useful in "real programs".

His wrong opinion was ingrained in my mind until i started working as an Android Dev. Now i can only praise the work and the incredible software that SQLite really is.

SQLite is really a toy database... you can link with your app and use as you wish!

But if we compare alternatives... it's a huge mess. Borland comes with IDAPI/BDE and now dbExpress. Microsoft comes with - Jet, DAO, ADO, OLEDB, ODBC, LINQ, etc.

That's why this toy database outrun them. Because it's simply and multiplatform.

Toy seem a bit unfair. The guy who wrote it did so because he was working on damage control systems on guided-missile destroyers and the Informix system installed on the ships wasn't reliable. When he left he developed SQLite which was then used by Motorola as part of a new cell phone OS. Simple maybe but not really toy applications. (interview with guy https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/)

I'm probably going to get clowned on here, and although I love sqlite for local development, I do wish that projects stop using sqlite as their only option for deployment, or worse, shove a temporary one in the same directory as persistent data. It's a huge pain if you use NFS backed storage or docker vols. There some home lab stuff that I just can't run due to it, which is sad because I need more services to waste power on.

Bit of a jump. List order 10 (a single order of magnitude) applications, jump to three orders of magnitude, multiply by the order of the population (the second step is reasonable). What's the difference between 10 and 1000? About 1000.

It's an interesting Fermi problem, definitely they establish >10^10 as reasonable. A couple of orders of magnitude is semi-forgivable, but debatable. I would say more possible than likely. "There may already be >1e12 SQLite databases on Earth."

Another worthy mention in the "most deployed software modules" has to be cURL/libcurl

Interestingly, while curl is installed by default on RHEL minimal installs (and maybe Fedora?), it's not installed by default on Debian ones (12.5 anyway, just checked).

About 1/3rd of them still have default credentials and at least half do zero input checking.

Does sqlite support credentials?

Would it matter? There would be waves of jackasses storing information in them with access granted to anyone, anywhere, because sec is a bother.

Well it would matter in that your comment would actually make sense.

https://www.unrepo.com/sqlite/authentication-and-authorizati...

Note: ANY data storage needs auth. While SQLite's auth is limited, it's still auth, so while you are technically correct, I still expect this to be fucked up by coders, because sec is a bother. smh.

SQLite is a file. It doesn't need auth any more than a text file your editor opens. The "auth" is in the OS not letting people access your files. That article seems to be talking about using SQLite to implement authentication for I guess web apps or something, and many/most sqlites are used for stuff that isn't anything like a server.

Admittedly coders can still fuck that up by not setting file permissions right(as with any file), so that other users on the system can access it, but these days that seems to be a secondary line of defense, now that systems are mostly single user or container based, people usually don't have fully untrusted stuff running outside a VM.

You clearly don't know what you are talking about.

SQLite is a file on disk, the security of who can access it is managed by the OS via filesystem permissions, users and other mechanisms. It's not rocket science, and you would know that if you actually bothered to learn the basics.

There is no "authentication" in SQLite, because it's not even applicable to what SQLite aims to be, which is an application file format. Would you also complain that there's no "authentication" on .json files?

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