Moving back and forth between an on-disk database and a fast in-memory database?

Question

Python\'s sqlite3 :memory: option provides speedier queries and updates than the equivalent on-disk database. How can I load a disk-based database in

Answer 1

Frankly, I wouldn't fool around too much with in-memory databases, unless you really do need an indexed structure that you know will always fit entirely within available memory. SQLite is extremely smart about its I/O, especially when you wrap everything (including reads ...) into transactions, as you should. It will very efficiently keep things in memory as it is manipulating data structures that fundamentally live on external storage, and yet it will never exhaust memory (nor, take too much of it). I think that RAM really does work better as "a buffer" instead of being the primary place where data is stored ... especially in a virtual storage environment, where everything must be considered as "backed by external storage anyway."