Does it matter what extension is used for SQLite database files

Question

Are there advantages or disadvantages to the file extension used for SQLite databases  It seems that SQLite itself does not require a naming convention  but there might be other reasons that a particular extension would be useful or problematic - for instance  certain tools  programming languages  installers  etc  Or end user considerations  The most common ones appear to be  sqlite   db  and  db3

User · Answer

SQLite doesn t define any particular extension for this  it s your own choice  Personally  I name them with the  sqlite extension  just so there isn t any ambiguity when I m looking at my files later

User · Answer

Emacs expects one of db  sqlite  sqlite2 or sqlite3 in the default configuration for sql-sqlite mode

User · Answer

Pretty much down to personal choice  It may make sense to use an extension based on the database scheme you are storing  treat your database schema as a file format  with SQLite simply being an encoding used for that file format  So  you might use  bookmarks if it s storing bookmarks  or  index if it s being used as an index   If you want to use a generic extension  I d use  sqlite3 since that is most descriptive of what version of SQLite is needed to work with the database

User · Answer

If you have settled on a particular set of tools to access   modify your databases  I would go with whatever extension they expect you to use  This will avoid needless friction when doing development tasks   For instance  SQLiteStudio v3 1 1 defaults to looking for files with the following extensions      db sdb sqlite db3 s3db sqlite3 sl3 db2 s2db sqlite2 sl2   If necessary for deployment your installation mechanism could rename the file if obscuring the file type seems useful to you  as some other answers have suggested   Filename requirements for development and deployment can be different

User · Answer

In distributable software  I dont want my customers mucking about in the database by themselves   The program reads and writes it all by itself   The only reason for a user to touch the DB file is to take a backup copy  Therefore I have named it whatever records db  The simple  db extension tells the user that it is a binary data file and that s all they have to know   Calling it  sqlite invites the interested user to open it up and mess something up   Totally depends on your usage scenario I suppose

[sqlite] Does it matter what extension is used for SQLite database files?

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