The SQLite-class SQL engine,
built from scratch in Rust.

A complete database engine, top to bottom

Tokenizer, parser, query planner, a register-based VDBE, B-tree storage, a pager with a page cache, write-ahead logging, and cross-process locking — all hand-rolled, all in one crate with no third-party code.

Neck-and-neck with SQLite

Eight complex analytical queries (joins, group-by, subqueries, anti-joins) over a ~150k-row dataset, versus the sqlite3 CLI — identical results on every query.

Measured on the bundled examples/ harnesses (release build). “× vs SQLite” < 1 means SQLXtraLite is faster; SQLite times are user+sys CPU, SQLXtraLite is wall-clock, so the real gap is a little narrower. Run them yourself: cargo run --release --example bench_vs_sqlite.

It runs WordPress. Without MySQL.

// WordPress talks to SQLXtraLite over FFI —
// no mysqld, no socket, no network.
$db = FFI::cdef("…", "libsqlxtralite.so");

// one file holds the whole store:
$ du -h wp-content/database/wpsxl.db
  18M   wpsxl.db

// MySQL processes running:
$ pgrep mysqld | wc -l
  0

A SQLite / MySQL hybrid

Built to be familiar from both worlds — SQLite semantics underneath, MySQL conveniences on top.

On the roadmap: window functions, CTEs (WITH), FULL JOIN, foreign-key enforcement.

Open a database in three lines

import sqlxtralite

con = sqlxtralite.connect("shop.db")
cur = con.cursor()

cur.execute("CREATE TABLE items (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, price REAL)")

# bind ? params — insert many rows at once
cur.executemany("INSERT INTO items VALUES (?, ?, ?)",
                [(1, "basil", 2.95), (2, "tomato", 3.50)])

cur.execute("SELECT name, price FROM items WHERE price > ?", (3,))
print(cur.fetchall())          # [('tomato', 3.5)]

$ sxl shop.db
SXLXtraLite shell — type .help, .quit to exit
sxl> SELECT name, price FROM items LIMIT 2;
+--------+-------+
| name   | price |
+--------+-------+
| basil  | 2.95  |
| tomato | 3.50  |
+--------+-------+
(2 rows)
sxl> .dump > backup.sql
sxl> PRAGMA integrity_check;
ok

Commercial & proprietary

SQLXtraLite is proprietary software — the source isn't public. Try the Python package from PyPI, then license it for production use, embedding, or redistribution.

SQLXtraLite is an independent, from-scratch engine. “SQLite”, “MySQL”, and “WordPress” are trademarks of their respective owners and are referenced only to describe compatibility.