I downloaded and installed the SQLite ODBC Driver from http://ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/. Works great with one issue. I can't seem to get an exclusive lock if another app has the database open.
I'm using a CAD application called Altium. I'm trying to build a prototype parts database in SQLITE to house data. I installed the ODBC driver referenced above and I can get to the data just fine. The issue is if I try to open the same database in an app like SQLITEStudio or DB Browser for SQLITE I can never get an exclusive lock to write new records. Altium never closes its connection and I don't know if that's the problem or not.
When I read https://www.sqlite.org/lockingv3.html it seems to indicate that multiple processes would need to communicate in order for one to obtain an exclusive lock (necessary for a write). This leads me to believe my issue is the first app never releasing it's shared lock so the second app can never get an exclusive lock. Am I interpreting this correctly?
I'm experiencing the same difficulties with SQLite as an Altium database. The database file can't be updated while Altium is open and had created a connection to the database. There are two workarounds I've found so far:
Enable Write Ahead Logging style database journal
The default database journal style, DELETE, creates a copy of the database, temporarily, writes to the database file, and, when the write is verified, deletes the temporary copy.
Write ahead logging, WAL, puts all changes in a temporary file while leaving the original copy of the database alone. Processes accessing the database parse the database file and the WAL temporary files, and return information reflecting all changes. I can confirm that writes outside of Altium are seen when doing a database refresh within Altium.
The writes stored in the WAL file are written to the original database when a checkpoint operation happens. Either when a process calls PRAGMA wal_checkpoint; or after a number of operations specified by the WAL Auto Checkpoint setting.
You can enable WAL journal mode in DB Browser's Edit Pragmas tab:
DB Browser Database Settings
The problem still isn't fixed, though. Checkpointing the database doesn't work while Altium is open. The database file is still locked from changes.
The caveat for us is that we want to backup and maintain a history of the database file in Git (yes, this is not a recommended use of Git). Writes to the journal files aren't tracked in Git, which doesn't see a change in the database file until it is checkpointed. This means that we can't push or pull from Git while Altium is open. We could track the database and journal files, but the other consequence is that a simple checkpoint with no data changes will be seen by Git as a change.
Use an alternative ODBC driver
I tested an alternative, proprietary ODBC driver from devart. When I configure Altium to connect to the SQLite database using the devart driver, DB Browser has no problems writing to the file while Altium is open, regardless of journal settings. Altium can also see those changes with a refresh operation.
Conclusion
Christian Werner's ODBC driver (as of version 0.9996) is locking the file in a manner that the devart driver does not, even while Atlium maintains a connection to the database through the driver. WAL journal mode can be a workaround for some situations.
Related
In an application that ships with a read-only SQLite database, I've found that opening the database as immutable radically improves query performance. However the SQLite documentation says this (emphasis mine):
The immutable parameter is a boolean query parameter that indicates that the database file is stored on read-only media. When immutable is set, SQLite assumes that the database file cannot be changed, even by a process with higher privilege, and so the database is opened read-only and all locking and change detection is disabled.
This is tripping me up a bit because the media (Windows Program Files) is not read-only and it can be changed, but the expectation is that it won't change. The application itself does not alter the database. A user could alter the databases using external tools (or just open it in Notepad and corrupt it) but we would call that user error and tell them not to do that.
My concern is that this part of the documentation might be hinting at some other process I'm not aware of (like maybe Windows periodically doing something that might result in the database file changing in some way).
If the application itself does not alter the database, and the user doesn't either, and there isn't some other malicious or poorly-coded program on the computer that might be touching files that don't belong to it, is it reasonably safe to open a SQLite database as immutable?
Experimentally, the answer appears to be yes, it is safe. I made this change and have not observed any problems with it.
I've been trying to implement the DB2 mechanism for restoring backups from one machine onto another, as part of our disaster recovery mechanism and for some kinds of problem diagnosis. I am making a copy of the keystore files and copying them back into DB2 before restoring, so everything should be OK.
And in most scenarios I've tested, it is OK.
However, if the machine I'm restoring onto has been used before (eg for other testing), then trying to restore one of the databases is failing oddly. For example, I'm trying to restore a backup from 11/26 onto another machine which was last used on 11/28, and DB2 is saying:
SQL1730N The command or operation failed because the master key label does not exist in the keystore file. Label being used: "DB2_SYSGEN_db2inst1_MYDATABASENAME_2017-11-28-20.58.07". File type number: "DB CFG". File name: "SQLDBCONF".
Note that the datestamp in that label is later than the backup I'm restoring, so the complaint makes some sense ... except that I don't understand where that master key label actually is, why it's persisting, and why copying in the keystore files before doing the restore wasn't sufficient to prevent it.
IBM does have some documentation on this error, at https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEPGG_10.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.messages.sql.doc/doc/msql01730n.html and https://developer.ibm.com/answers/questions/319149/how-to-change-the-master-key-password-after-restor.html ... but I'm not really a DB2 user and I'm having trouble figuring out what they're suggesting I change.
Can someone sketch a sequence of operations which will make a backdated backup from one machine reliably load onto another? I'm sure there is a Best Practice for DB2 backup and restore out there somewhere which would address this, but I've been hunting entirely too long and not finding it... and I can't believe I'm the only one who finds DB2's backup/restore system confusing.
I'm using DB2 10.5, if that helps at all.
If a SQLite database using write-ahead logging is interrupted with un-checkpointed transactions (due to a power failure or whatever), then reopened with the temporary -wal file missing, will the database open cleanly to its state as of the last checkpoint, or will it be corrupted in some way?
We're trying to get SQLite working with iCloud (yes, we know you're not supposed to do that, but we also make a Windows and an Android app and need a cross-platform database solution), and we think that WAL provides a potential way to avoid having to maintain two copies of our database - we'd keep the -wal file outside of iCloud but store the main database in it, thus avoiding the problem of iCloud backing up rollback journals (or backing up databases mid-transaction without those journals).
The file format documentation mentions a "hot WAL file", but this applies only to uncommitted data.
The database file itself does not contain any information about committed data in the -wal file, i.e., transactions before a checkpoint typically do not alter the main database file at all.
Therefore, deleting the -wal file will simply restore the database to the state it was after the last checkpoint (which is outdated, but consistent); all transactions committed later will just be lost.
See the "Checkpointing" section of SQLite's Write-Ahead Logging. From what I understand, the data in the WAL file would simply not be committed.
In other words, you'd lose the data in the .WAL file that hasn't yet been committed, but the main database itself should be perfectly fine.
It can lead to db corruption when WAL file would be deleted during checkpointing operation. In case of unfinished db modification WAL file is necessary to complete the changes, otherwise db file is in transient state. DB and WAL file create complete picture of the db state. It is also explicitly stated in https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html#delhotjrnl that "SQLite must see the journal files in order to recover from a crash or power failure."
Open read-only
I have a sqlite3 file on a filesystem that belongs to a different user than is running the reading process. I want the reading process to be able to read the file in read-only mode, so I'm passing SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY. I would expect that to work. Surely the idea is that read-only mode works on files that we don't want to write to?
When I prepare my first statement I get
unable to open database file
Similarly if I run the sqlite3 command line tool I get the same result unless I sudo. Which seems to confirm to me that the issue is writeability rather than anything else.
Journal files
The answer to this question seems to suggest that if there are journal files around then read-only access isn't possible.
Why are there journal files? Because another process is writing the file, my user process is trying to open it in read-only. To do this I am using Write-Ahead Logging, which produces two journal files, -shm and -wal. True enough, if I stop the writing process and remove the journal files, my user process can open it in read-only mode.
Incompatibility?
So I have two situations:
If the file belongs to the writing process and also the read-only process, write-ahead logging enables process A to write and process B to read-only
If the file belongs to the writing process but does not belong to the read-only process, the read-only process is blocked from opening read-only.
How do I achieve both of these? To spell it out, I want:
Writing process owns database
Read-only process does not own database
Read-only process cannot write to database
Write-ahead logging is enabled on database
Seems like a simple set of requirements, but I can't see an obvious solution.
**EDIT: ** Going by this documentation, it looks like this isn't possible. Can you suggest any alternative ways to achieve the above?
Yes WAL-journaled databases cannot be opened read-only, explicitly or otherwise (i.e. in the case where the database file is read-only to the process).
If you require that the read-only process absolutely not be allowed to modify the database file, then the only thing that comes to mind is that the write process maintains a not WAL-journal additional copy of the database.
Bottom line: to the best of my knowledge, WAL and read-only can't be done.
I think what the documentation is saying is that the WAL database itself may not be present on a readonly media, which does not necessarily mean you cannot use SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY. In fact, I have successfully opened two connections, a read-write as well as one with SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY, both on a WAL sqlite database. These work just fine. I tested an INSERT query using the read-only connection and the statement correctly returned an error that the database is read-only.
Just make sure that the database is stored on some media with write-access as a -shm file needs to be created and maintained, and so even a 'ready-only' connection may actually physically write something to disk - which doesn't necessarily mean that it can modify data using SQL.
I've got a sqlite3 DB that I need to read (not write) sitting on a read-only filesystem. There is also a -journal file associated with the database, which is interfering with opening the database because the first thing the sqlite code wants to do is delete that -journal file and it cannot because the filesystem is read-only. Setting the journal_mode to off doesn't help because that apparently only applies to new transactions. Is there a way to tell sqlite3 to simply ignore all mention of a -journal file associated with a DB?
Unfortunately no.
The problem is that the existence of a journal file indicates that a transaction was left in an incomplete state, and needs to be rolled back by transferring the content of the journal file back into the database file.
This requires write access to the file system, and SQLite will not allow you to open the file without performing this rollback.
You can read more about this here: Read-Only Databases:
No SQLite database (regardless of whether or not it is WAL mode) is readable if it is located on read-only media and it requires recovery. So, for example, if an application crashes and leaves an SQLite database with a hot journal, that database cannot be opened unless the opening process has write privilege on the database file, the directory containing the database file, and the hot journal. This is because the incomplete transaction left over from the crash must be rolled back prior to reading the database and that rollback cannot occur without write permission on all files and the directory containing them.
If you don't care about the possible corruption that discarding the journal file might lead to, you can make a copy of the database file, and leave the journal behind. Though, if you have the ability to do that, I would in fact copy the journal file too, to a writable file system, and open that database as normal, which would roll back the transaction properly.
The copy on the read-only file system though is not usable in its current state.