Taking a book from an idea to a finished product involves a great many people. Although my name is on the cover, this could not have been possible without all of their help.

First, I would like to acknowledge the friendship and support of my primary editor, Mike Loukides. Thanks to some mutual friends, I first started doing technical reviews for Mike over eight years ago. Through the years, Mike gently encouraged me to take on my own project.

The first step on that path came nearly three years ago. I had downloaded a set of database exports from the Wikipedia project and was trying to devise a minimal database configuration that would (hopefully) cram nearly all the current data onto a small flash storage card. The end goal was to provide a local copy of the Wikipedia articles on an ebook reader I had. SQLite was a natural choice. At some point, frustrated with trying to understand the correct call sequence, I threw my hands up and exclaimed, “Someone should write a book about this!”—Ding!—The proverbial light bulb went off, and many, many (many…) late nights later, here we are.

Behind Mike stands the whole staff of O’Reilly Media. Everyone I interacted with did their best to help me out, calm me down, and fix my problems—sometimes all at once. The production staff understands how to make life easy for the author, so that we can focus on writing and leave the details to someone else.

I would like to thank D. Richard Hipp, the creator and lead maintainer of SQLite. In addition to coordinating the continued development of SQLite and providing us all with a high-quality software product, he was also gracious enough to answer numerous questions, as well as review a final draft of the manuscript. Some tricky spots went through several revisions, and he was always quick to review things and get back to me with additional comments.

A technical review was also done by Jon W. Marks. Jon is an old personal and professional friend with enterprise-class database experience. He has had the opportunity to mentor several experienced developers as they made their first journey into the relational database world. Jon provided very insightful feedback, and was able to pinpoint areas that are often difficult for beginners to grasp.

My final two technical reviewers were Jordan Hawker and Erin Moy. Although they are knowledgeable developers, they were relatively new to relational databases. As they went through the learning process, they kept me honest when I started to make too many assumptions, and kept me on track when I started to skip ahead too quickly.

I also owe a thank-you to Mike Kulas and all my coworkers at Volition, Inc. In addition to helping me find the right balance between my professional work and the book work, Mike helped me navigate our company’s intellectual property policies, making sure everything was on the straight and narrow. Numerous coworkers also deserve a thank-you for reviewing small sections, looking at code, asking lots of good questions, and otherwise putting up with me venting about not having enough time in the day.

A tip of the hat goes out to the crew at the Aroma Café in downtown Champaign, Illinois. They’re just a few blocks down from my workplace, and a significant portion of this book was written at their coffee shop. Many thanks to Michael and his staff, including Kim, Sara, Nichole, and Jerry, for always having a hot and creamy mocha ready.

Finally, I owe a tremendous debt to my wife, Debbie Fligor, and our two sons. They were always willing to make time for me to write and showed enormous amounts of patience and understanding. They all gave more than I had any right to ask, and this accomplishment is as much theirs as it is mine.