SQLite Release 3.8.8 On 2015-01-16

New Features:

• Added the PRAGMA data_version command that can be used to determine if a database file has been modified by another process.
• Added the SQLITE_CHECKPOINT_TRUNCATE option to the sqlite3_wal_checkpoint_v2() interface, with corresponding enhancements to PRAGMA wal_checkpoint.
• Added the sqlite3_stmt_scanstatus() interface, available only when compiled with SQLITE_ENABLE_STMT_SCANSTATUS.
• The sqlite3_table_column_metadata() is enhanced to work correctly on WITHOUT ROWID tables and to check for the existence of a a table if the column name parameter is NULL. The interface is now also included in the build by default, without requiring the SQLITE_ENABLE_COLUMN_METADATA compile-time option.
• Added the SQLITE_ENABLE_API_ARMOR compile-time option.
• Added the SQLITE_REVERSE_UNORDERED_SELECTS compile-time option.
• Added the SQLITE_SORTER_PMASZ compile-time option and SQLITE_CONFIG_PMASZ start-time option.
• Added the SQLITE_CONFIG_PCACHE_HDRSZ option to sqlite3_config() which makes it easier for applications to determine the appropriate amount of memory for use with SQLITE_CONFIG_PAGECACHE.
• The number of rows in a VALUES clause is no longer limited by SQLITE_LIMIT_COMPOUND_SELECT.
• Added the eval.c loadable extension that implements an eval() SQL function that will recursively evaluate SQL.

  Performance Enhancements:

• Reduce the number of memcpy() operations involved in balancing a b-tree, for 3.2% overall performance boost.
• Improvements to cost estimates for the skip-scan optimization.
• The automatic indexing optimization is now capable of generating a partial index if that is appropriate.

  Bug fixes:

• Ensure durability following a power loss with "PRAGMA journal_mode=TRUNCATE" by calling fsync() right after truncating the journal file.
• The query planner now recognizes that any column in the right-hand table of a LEFT JOIN can be NULL, even if that column has a NOT NULL constraint. Avoid trying to optimize out NULL tests in those cases. Fix for ticket 6f2222d550f5b0ee7ed.
• Make sure ORDER BY puts rows in ascending order even if the DISTINCT operator is implemented using a descending index. Fix for ticket c5ea805691bfc4204b1cb9e.
• Fix data races that might occur under stress when running with many threads in shared cache mode where some of the threads are opening and closing connections.
• Fix obscure crash bugs found by american fuzzy lop. Ticket a59ae93ee990a55.
• Work around a GCC optimizer bug (for gcc 4.2.1 on MacOS 10.7) that caused the R-Tree extension to compute incorrect results when compiled with -O3.

  Other changes:

• Disable the use of the strchrnul() C-library routine unless it is specifically enabled using the -DHAVE_STRCHRNULL compile-time option.
• Improvements to the effectiveness and accuracy of the likelihood(), likely(), and unlikely() SQL hint functions.
• SQLITE_SOURCE_ID: "2015-01-16 12:08:06 7d68a42face3ab14ed88407d4331872f5b243fdf"
• SHA1 for sqlite3.c: 91aea4cc722371d58aae3d22e94d2a4165276905

A complete list of SQLite releases in a single page and a chronology are both also available. A detailed history of every check-in is available at SQLite version control site.