Why SQLite succeeded as a database with Richard Hipp, creator of SQLite (Changelog Interviews #201)

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This episode is part of our remastered greatest hits collection and features Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite, talking with us about its history, where it came from, why it has succeeded as a database, how its development has been sustainably funded, and the how and why of it being the most widely deployed database engine in the world.

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79 minutes

Recorded Apr 30, 2016

Published Apr 30, 2016

Download (76MB)

Transcript

SQLite

Databases

Richard Hipp – Website, X

Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

SQLite Home Page

GDBM

fopen(3) - Linux manual page

Bruce Perens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia who co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI)

Changelog

Play the audio to listen along while you enjoy the transcript. 🎧

Adam Stacoviak

We’re here today joined by Richard Hipp. Now, Jerod, this is a deep topic because SQLite or SQLite (different pronunciation) - we’ll debate that during the show - is such a prolific, widely-used technology. This is something you pointed out, in terms of this technology to kind of interest you, so maybe we should open up with why, why did it interest you so much?

Jerod Santo

Why it interested me was basically for the ubiquity of it. You know, it’s one of those technologies… I think, I’ve said before on the show - I think it was the cURL show - we were coming to software development around the year I guess 2001, 2002… Anything that predates my inception into software, I just kind of assumed it always existed. And so this is one of those programs that I just haven’t thought about in the historical context, until I saw something like an article, I think the Guardian article which was actually written back in 2007 but still seemed pretty poignant until this day, and got to just reading about… You know, I knew what the technology was, but reading about the technology and how many - I mean it’s just like in almost every device in the world.

Adam Stacoviak

Right.

Jerod Santo

And it’s public domain, super interesting. So I said, “Oh, we gotta get this guy on the show”, and Richard, thanks so much for joining us.

Richard Hipp

Thank you for having me guys.

Adam Stacoviak

So here’s the way we kick off the show - diving a little deeper, especially Richard to someone like you, who’s got a deep, rich history of software development; kind of figuring out where they came from, what made them get into technology in the first place. So take us back to as early as you want to that got your influence, that got your feet wet in technology. What were the first steps that got you into software development?

Richard Hipp

[03:46] When I was in the 9th grade, I saw all a Teletype connected with an acoustic coupler 110-baud modem to a mainframe computer. And I said, “I’ve got to learn to program that.” And I went to the school library and I checked out every single book about computers in my high school library, all three of them, and I read them cover to cover that night. And I got an account on that little computer and started programming away in BASIC. Saved up my money… Shortly after that, the Apple I came out, and I was about to buy the Apple I and the Apple II came out. And I bought just the motherboard for an Apple II. Got it.

Had to build my own keyboard, my own power supply, soldered it altogether. The first board I got didn’t work. I called up Apple, they put me through the technical support and Steve Wozniak answers the phone.

Adam Stacoviak

Whaat?

Richard Hipp

..and said, “Oh, yeah. Send it back. We’ll send you another board.” They sent me another motherboard and that one worked. That’s how I got started in computers, trying to write programs in 4K of RAM, and that 4K included the video memory. So that’s how I got started.

I went to university, studied Electrical Engineering, didn’t do anything with computers for a while. Coming out of university with a master’s degree, I took job at Bell Labs, and the first thing they did was sit me down in front of a console, running Unix, and I learned Unix and C, and work there for a few years, quit, went back to graduate school, came out of graduate school in 1992.

Back then getting a tenure track position was really, really hard. There were hundreds of candidates for any open position, and I was not the best candidate. My application was near the bottom of the stack, and so I just started my own company, just developing bespoke software, solving hard problems for people.

That company has been in business now for 24 years. In the course of doing that one time we had a problem where we needed a database engine. We were using Informix. The customer said...