<title>File Format For SQLite Databases</title>
<tcl>hd_keywords {file format redux}</tcl>

<h1 align=center>
The SQLite Database File Format
</h1>

<p>This document describes and defines the on-disk database file
format for SQLite.</p>

<p>This is the second document to define the SQLite database file format.
The [file format| first document] differs from this one in that it is
written in a formal style whereas this document attempts to be more
conversational.  The two documents were independently written (they have
different authors) and hence serve as cross-checks for one another.
Both documents should describe exactly the same file format.  
Any discrepencies between the two documents should be considered a bug.</p>

<h2>1.0 The Database File</h2>

<p>Most of the time the complete state of an SQLite database 
is contained a single file on disk called the "main database file".</p>

<p>While performing a transaction, SQLite stores some temporary information
in a second file called the "rollback journal".  If the application or
host computer crashes before completing the transaction, then the rollback
journal contains critical state information needed to restore the
content of the main database file.  When a rollback journal contains
information necessary for recovering the state of the database, we say
that it is a "hot journal".  Hot journals only come up in an error recovery
scenario and so are uncommon, but they are part of the state of an SQLite
database and so should not be ignored.  This document will define the format
of a rollback journal, but most of the content of this document will focus
on the main database file.</p>

<h3>1.1 Pages</h3>

<p>The main database file consists of one or more pages.  The size of a
page is a power of two between 512 and 32768 inclusive.  All pages within
the same database are the same size.  The page size for a database file
is determined by the 2-byte big-endian integer located at an offset of
16 bytes from the beginning of the database file.</p>

<p>Pages are numbered beginning with 1.  The maximum page number is
2147483646 (2<sup><small>31</small></sup> - 2).  The minimum size
SQLite database is a single 512-byte page.
The maximum size database would be 2147483646 pages at 32768 bytes per
page or 70,368,744,112,128 bytes (about 70 terabytes).  Usually SQLite will
hit the maximum file size limit of the underlying filesystem or disk
hardware size limit long before it hits its own internal size limit.</p>

<p>In common use, SQLite databases tend to range in size from a few kilobytes
to a few gigabytes.</p>

<p>At any point in time, every page in the main database has a single
use which is one of the following:
<ul>
<li>The lock-byte page
<li>A freelist page
<ul>
<li>A freelist trunk page
<li>A freelist leaf page
</ul>
<li>A b-tree page
<ul>
<li>A table b-tree interior page
<li>A table b-tree leaf page
<li>An index b-tree interior page
<li>An index b-tree leaf page
</ul>
<li>A payload overflow page
<li>A pointer map page
</ul>
</p>

<p>All reads from and writes to the main database file begin at a page
boundary and all writes are an integer number of pages in size.  Reads
are also usually an integer number of pages in size, with the one exception
that when the database is first opened, the first 100 bytes of the
database file (the database file header) are read as a sub-page size unit.</p>

<p>Before any information-bearing page of the database is modified, 
the original unmodified content of that page is written into the 
rollback journal.  If a transaction is interrupted and needs to be 
rolled back, the rollback journal can then be used to restore the
database to its original state.  Freelist leaf pages bear no
information that would need to be restored on a rollback and so they
are not written to the journal prior to modification, in order to
reduce disk I/O.</p>

<tcl>hd_fragment database_header {database header}</tcl>
<h3>1.2 The Database Header</h3>

<p>The first 100 bytes of the database file comprise the database file 
header.  The database file header is divided into fields as shown by
the table below.  All multibyte fields in the database file header are
stored with the must significant byte first (big-endian).</p>

<center>
<i>Database Header Format</i><br>
<table width="80%" border=1>
<tr><th>Offset<th>Size<th>Description
<tr><td valign=top align=center>0<td valign=top align=center>16<td align=left>
The header string: "SQLite format 3\000"
<tr><td valign=top align=center>16<td valign=top align=center>2<td align=left>
The database page size in bytes.  Must be a power of two between 512
and 32768 inclusive.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>18<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
File format write version.  Must be 1.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>19<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
File format read version.  Must be 1.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>20<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
Bytes of unused "reserved" space at the end of each page.  Usually 0.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>21<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
Maximum embedded payload fraction.  Must be 64.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>22<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
Minimum embedded payload fraction.  Must be 32.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>23<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
Leaf payload fraction.  Must be 32.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>24<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
File change counter.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>28<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
Reserved for expansion.  Must be zero.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>32<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
Page number of the first freelist trunk page.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>36<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
Total number of freelist pages.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>40<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
The schema cookie.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>44<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
The schema format number.  Currently support schema formats are 1, 2, 3, and 4.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>48<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
Default page cache size.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>52<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
The page number of the largest root b-tree page when in auto-vacuum or
incremental-vacuum modes, or zero otherwise.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>56<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
The database text encoding.  A value of 1 means UTF-8.  A value of 2
means UTF-16le.  A value of 3 means UTF-16be.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>60<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
The "user version" as read and set by the [user_version pragma].
<tr><td valign=top align=center>64<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
True (non-zero) for incremental-vacuum mode.  False (zero) otherwise.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>68<td valign=top align=center>32<td align=left>
Reserved for expansion.  Must be zero.
</table></center>

<p>Every SQLite database file begins with the following 16 bytes (in hex):
53 51 4c 69 74 65 20 66 6f 72 6d 61 74 20 33 00.  This byte sequence
corresponds to the UTF-8 string "SQLite format 3" including the nul
terminator character at the end.</p>

<p>The file format write version and file format read version at offsets
18 and 19 are intended to allow for enhancements of the file format
in future versions of SQLite.  In current versions of SQLite, both of
these values must be one.  If a version of SQLite coded to the current
file format specification encounters a database file where the read
version is 1 but the write version is greater than one, then the database
file must be treated as read-only.  If a database file with a read version
greater than 1 is encounter, then that database cannot be read or written.</p>

<p>SQLite has the ability to set aside a small number of extra bytes at
the end of every page for use by extensions.  These extra bytes are
used, for example, by the SQLite Encryption Extension to store a nonce
and/or cryptographic checksum associated with each page.  The 
"reserved space" size in the 1-byte integer at offset 20 is the number
of bytes of space at the end of each page to reserve for extensions.
This value is usually 0.  The value can be odd.</p>

<tcl>hd_fragment usable_size {usable size}</tcl>
<p>The "usable size" of a database page is the page size specify by the
2-byte integer at offset 16 in the header less the "reserved" space size
recorded in the 1-byte integer at offset 20 in the header.  The usable
size of a page might be an odd number.  However, the usable size is not
allowed to be less than 480.  In other words, if the page size is 512,
then the reserved space size cannot exceed 32.</p>

<p>The maximum and minimum embedded payload fractions and the leaf
payload fraction values must be 64, 32, and 32.  These values were
orginally intended to as tunable parameters that could be used to
modify the storage format of the b-tree algorithm.  However, that
functionality is not supported and there are no current plans to add
support in the future.  Hence, these three bytes are fixed at the
values specified.</p>

<p>The file change counter is a 4-byte big-endian integer which is
incremented whenever the database file is changed.  When two or more
processes are reading the same database file, each process can detect
database changes from other processes by monitoring the change counter.
A process will normally want to flush its database page cache when
another process modified the database, since the cache has become stale.
The file change counter facilitates this.</p>

<p>Unused pages in the database file are stored on a freelist.  The
4-byte big-endian integer at offset 32 stores the page number of
the first page of the freelist, or zero if the freelist is empty.
The 4-byte big-endian integer at offset 36 stores stores the total 
number of pages on the freelist.</p>

<p>The schema cookie is a 4-byte big-endian integer at offset 40
that is incremented whenever the database schema changes.  A 
prepared statement is compiled against a specific version of the
database schema.  Whenever the database schema changes, the statement
must be reprepared.  Whenever a prepared statement runs, it first checks
the schema cookie to make sure the value is the same as when the statement
was prepared and if not it aborts to force the statement to be reprepared.</p>

<p>The schema format number is a 4-byte big-endian integer at offset 44.
The schema format number is similar to the file format read and write
version numbers at offsets 18 and 19 except that the schema format number
refers to the high-level SQL formatting rather than the low-level b-tree
formatting.  Four schema format numbers are currently defined:</p>

<ol>
<li value=1>Format 1 is understood by all versions of SQLite back to
version 3.0.0.</li>
<li value=2>Format 2 adds the ability of rows within the same table
to have a varing number of columns, in order to support the
[ALTER TABLE | ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN] functionality.  Support for
reading and writing format 2 was added in SQLite version 3.1.3 
on 2005-02-19.</li>
<li value=3>Format 3 adds the ability of extra columns added by
[ALTER TABLE | ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN] to have non-NULL default
values.  This capability was added in SQLite version 3.1.4 
on 2005-03-11.</li>
<li value=4>Format 4 causes SQLite to respect the DESC keyword on
index declarations.  (The DESC is ignore in indices for formats 1, 2, and 3.)
Format 4 also adds two new boolean record type values (serial types
8 and 9.)  Support for format 4 was added in SQLite 3.3.0 on
2006-01-10.</li>
</ol>

<p>New database files created by SQLite use format 1 by default, so
that database files created by newer versions of SQLite can still
be read by older versions of SQLite.
The [legacy_file_format pragma] can be used to cause SQLite
to create new database files using format 4.  Future versions of 
SQLite may begin to create files using format 4 by default.</p>

<p>The 4-byte big-endian signed integer at offset 48 is the suggest
cache size in pages for the database file.  The value is a suggestion
only and SQLite is under no obligation to honor it.  The absolute value
of the integer is used as the suggested size.  The suggested cache size
can be set using the [default_cache_size pragma].</p>

<p>The two 4-byte big-endian integers at offsets 52 and 64 are used
to manage the [auto_vacuum] and [incremental_vacuum] modes.  If
the integer at offset 52 is zero then pointer-map (ptrmap) pages are
omitted from the database file and neither auto_vacuum nor
incremental_vacuum are supported.  If the integer at offset 52 is
non-zero then it is the page number of the largest root page in the
database file, the database file contain ptrmap pages, and the
mode must be either auto_vacuum or incremental_vacuum.  In this latter
case, the integer at offset 64 is true for incremental_vacuum and
false for auto_vacuum.  If the integer at offset 52 is zero then
the integer at offset 64 must also be zero.</p>

<p>The 4-byte big-endian integer at offset 56 determines the encoding
used for all text strings stored in the database.  A value of 1 means
UTF-8.  A value of 2 means UTF-16le.  A value of 3 means UTF-16be.
No other values are allowed.</p>

<p>The 4-byte big-endian integer at offset 60 is the user version which
is set and queried by the [user_version pragma].  The user version is
not used by SQLite.</p>

<p>All other bytes of the database file header are reserved for
future expansion and must be set to zero.</p>

<h3>1.3 The Lock-Byte Page</h3>

<p>The lock-byte page is the single page of the database file
that contains the bytes at offsets between 1073741824 and 1073742335,
inclusive.  A database file that is less than or equal to 1073741824 bytes 
in size contains no lock-byte page.  A database file larger than
1073741824 contains exactly one lock-byte page.
</p>

<p>The lock-byte page is set aside for use by the operating-system specific
VFS implementation in implementing the database file locking primitives.
SQLite will not use the lock-byte page; it will never be read or written
by the SQLite core, though operating-system specific VFS implementions may
choose to read or write bytes on the lock-byte page according to the 
needs and proclavities of the underlying system.  The unix and win32
VFS implementations that come built into SQLite do not write to the
lock-byte page, but we are aware of third-party VFS implementations for
other operating systems that do sometimes write to the lock-byte page.</p>

<h3>1.4 The Freelist</h3>

<p>A database file might contain one or more pages that are not in
active use.  Unused pages can come about, for example, when information
is deleted from the database.  Unused pages are stored on the freelist
and are reused when additional pages are required.</p>

<p>The freelist is organized as a linked list of freelist trunk pages
with each trunk pages containing page numbers for zero or more freelist
leaf pages.</p>

<p>A freelist trunk page consists of an array of 4-byte big-endian integers.
The size of the array is as many integers as will fit in the usable space
of a page.  The minimum usable space is 480 bytes so the array will always
be at least 120 entries in length.  The first integer in the array 
is the page number of the next freelist trunk page in the list or zero 
if this is the last freelist trunk page.  The second integer in the array
is the number of leaf page pointers to follow.  Call the second integer L.
If L is greater than zero then integers with array indexes between 2 and
L+1 inclusive contain page numbers for freelist leaf pages.</p>

<p>Freelist leaf pages contain no information.  SQLite avoid reading or
writing freelist leaf pages in order to reduce disk I/O.</p>

<p>A bug in SQLite versions prior to 3.6.0 caused the database to be
reported as corrupt if any last 6 entries in the freelist trunk page 
array contained non-zero values.  Newer versions of SQLite do not have
this problem.  However, newer versions of SQLite still avoid using the 
last six entries in the freelist trunk page array in order that database
files created by newer versions of SQLite can be read by older versions
of SQLite.</p>

<p>The number of freelist pages is stored as a 4-byte big-endian integer
in the database header at an offset of 36 from the beginning of the file.
The database header also stores the page number of the first freelist trunk
page as a 4-byte big-endian integer at an offset of 32 from the beginning
of the file.</p>

<h3>1.5 B-tree Pages</h3>

<p>A b-tree page is either an interior page or a leaf page.
A leaf page contains keys and in the case of a table b-tree each
key has associated content.  An interior page contains
K keys without content but with K+1 pointers to child b-tree pages.
A "pointer" in an interior b-tree page is just the 31-bit integer
page number of the child page.</p>


<p>Define the depth
of a leaf b-tree to be 1 and that the depth of any interior b-tree to be one
more than the maximum depth of any of its children.  In a well-formed
database, all children of any one interior b-tree have the same depth.</p>

<p>In an interior b-tree page, the pointers and keys logically alternate 
with a pointer on both ends. (The previous sentence is to be understood
conceptually - the actual layout of the keys and
pointers within the page is more complicated and will be described in
the sequel.)  All keys within the same page are unique and are organized
in ascending order from left to right.  For any key X, pointers to the left
of a X refer to b-tree pages on which alls keys are less than or equal to X.
Pointers to the right of X refer to pages where all keys are greater than X.</p>

<p>Within an interior b-tree page, each key and the pointer to its
immediate left are combined into a structure called a "cell".  The
right-most pointer is held separately.  A leaf b-tree page has no
pointers, but it still uses the cell structure to hold keys for
index b-trees or keys and content for table b-trees.</p>
</p>

<p>Every b-tree page has at most one parent b-tree page.
A b-tree page without a parent is called a root page.  A root b-tree page
together with the closure of its children form a complete b-tree.
It is possible (and in fact rather common) to have a complete b-tree
that consists of a single page that is both a leaf and the root.
Because there are pointers from parents to children, every page of a
complete b-tree can be located if only the root page is known.  Hence,
b-trees are identified by their root page number.</p>

<p>A b-tree page is either a table b-tree page or an index b-tree page.
All pages within each complete b-tree are of the same type: either table
or index.  There is a one-to-one mapping from table b-trees in the database 
file to (non-virtual) tables in the database schema, including system tables
such as sqlite_master.  There is one-to-one mapping between index b-trees
in the database file and indices in the schema, including implied indices
created by uniqueness constraints.  The b-tree corresponding to the
sqlite_master table always has its root page on a page number of 1.
The sqlite_master table contains the root page number for every other 
table and index in the database file.</p>

<p>Each entry in a table b-tree consists of a 64-bit signed integer key
and up to 2147483647 bytes of arbitrary data.  Interior table b-trees
hold only keys and pointers to children.  All data is contained in the
table b-tree leaves.</p>

<p>Each entry in an index b-tree consists of an arbitrary key of up
to 2147483647 bytes in length and no data.</p>

<p>Define the "payload" of a cell to be the arbitrary length section
of the cell.  For an index b-tree, the key is always arbitrary in length
and hence the payload is the key.  There are no arbitrary length elements
in the cells of interior table b-tree pages and so those cells have no
payload.  Table b-tree leaf pages contain arbitrary length content and
so for cells on those pages the payload is the content.
<p>When the size of payload for a cell exceeds a certain threshold (to
be defined later) then only the first few bytes of the payload
are stored on the b-tree page and the balance is stored in a linked list
of content overflow pages.</p>

<p>A b-tree page is divided into regions in the following order:

<ol>
<li>The 100-byte database file header (found on page 1 only)
<li>The 8 or 12 byte b-tree page header
<li>The cell pointer array
<li>Unallocated space
<li>The cell content area
<li>The reserved region.
</ol>
</p>

<p>The 100-byte database file header is found only on page 1, which is
always a table b-tree page.  All other b-tree pages in the database file
omit this 100-byte header.</p>

<p>The reserved region is an area of unused space at the end of every
page (except the locking page) that extensions can use to hold per-page
information.  The size of the reserved region is determined by the one-byte
unsigned integer found at an offset of 20 into the database file header.
The size of the reserved region is usually zero.</p>

<p>The b-tree page header is 8 bytes in size for leaf pages and 12
bytes for interior pages.  All multibyte values in the page header
are big-endian.
The b-tree page header is composed of the following fields:</p>

<center>
<i>B-tree Page Header Format</i><br>
<table border=1 width="80%">
<tr><th>Offset<th>Size<th>Description
<tr><td align=center valign=top>0<td align=center valign=top>1<td align=left>
A flag indicating the b-tree page type
A value of 2 means the page is an interior index b-tree page.
A value of 5 means the page is an interior table b-tree page.
A value of 10 means the page is a leaf index b-tree page.
A value of 13 means the page is a leaf table b-tree page.
Any other value is an error.
<tr><td align=center valign=top>1<td align=center valign=top>2<td align=left>
Byte offset into the page of the first freeblock
<tr><td align=center valign=top>3<td align=center valign=top>2<td align=left>
Number of cells on this page
<tr><td align=center valign=top>5<td align=center valign=top>2<td align=left>
Offset to the first byte of the cell content area
<tr><td align=center valign=top>7<td align=center valign=top>1<td align=left>
Number of fragmented free bytes within the cell content area
<tr><td align=center valign=top>8<td align=center valign=top>4<td align=left>
The right-most pointer (interior b-tree pages only)
</table></blockquote></center>

<p>The cell pointer array of a b-tree page immediately follows the b-tree
page header.  Let K be the number of cells on the btree.  The cell pointer
array consists of K 2-byte integer offsets to the cell contents.  The
cell pointers are arranged in key order with left-most cell (the cell with the
smallest key) first and the right-most cell (the cell with the largest
key) last.</p>

<p>Cell content is stored in the cell content region of the b-tree page.
SQLite strives to place cells as far toward the end of the b-tree page as
it can, in order to leave space for future growth of the cell pointer array.
The area in between the last cell pointer array entry and the beginning of
the first cell is the unallocated region.
</p>

<p>A freeblock is a structure used to identify unallocated space within
a b-tree page.  Freeblocks are organized on a chain.  The first 2 bytes of
a freeblock are a big-endian integer which is the offset in the b-tree page
of the next freeblock in the chain, or zero if the freeblock is the last on
the chain.  The third and fourth bytes of each freeblock form
a bit-endian integers which is the size of the freeblock in bytes, including
the 4-byte header.  Freeblocks are always connected in order 
of increasing offset.  The second field of the b-tree page header is the
offset of the first freeblock, or zero if there are no freeblocks on the
page.  In a well-formed b-tree page, there will always be at least one cell
before the first freeblock.</p>

<p>A freeblock requires at least 4 bytes of space.  If there is an isolated
group of 1, 2, or 3 unused bytes within the cell content area, those bytes
comprise a fragment.  The total number of bytes in all fragments is stored
in the fifth field of the b-tree page header.  In a well-formed b-tree page,
the total number of bytes in fragments may not exceed 60.</p>

<p>The total amount of free space on a b-tree page consists of the size
of the unallocated region plus the total size of all freeblocks plus the
number of fragmented free bytes.  SQLite may from time to time reorganize
a b-tree page so that there are no freeblocks or fragment bytes, all
unused bytes are contained in the unallocated space region, and all
cells are packed tightly at the end of the page.  This is called 
"defragmenting" the b-tree page.</p>

<p>A variable-length integer or "varint" is a static Huffman encoding
of 64-bit twos-complement integers that uses less space for small positive 
values. 
A varint is between 1 and 9 bytes in length.  The varint consists of either
zero or more byte which have the high-order bit set followed by a single byte
with the high-order bit clear, or nine bytes, whichever is shorter.
The lower seven bits of each of the first eight bytes and all 8 bits of
the ninth byte are used to reconstruct the 64-bit twos-complement integer.
Varints are big-endian: bits taken from the earlier byte of the varint
are the more significant and bits taken from the later bytes. </p>

<p>The format of a cell depends on which kind of b-tree page the cell
appears on.  The following table shows the elements of a cell, in
order of appearance, for the various b-tree page types.</p>

<blockquote><dl>
<dt><p>Table B-Tree Leaf Cell:</p></dt>
<dd><p><ul>
<li>A varint which is the total number of bytes of payload, including any
overflow
<li>A varint which is the integer key, a.k.a. "rowid"
<li>The initial portion of the payload that does not spill to overflow
pages.
<li>A 4-byte big-endian integer page number for the first page of the
overflow page list - omitted if all payload fits on the b-tree page.
</ul></p></dd>

<dt><p>Table B-Tree Interior Cell:</p></dt>
<dd><p><ul>
<li>A 4-byte big-ending page number which is the left child pointer.
<li>A varint which is the integer key
</ul></p></dd>

<dt><p>Index B-Tree Leaf Cell:</p></dt>
<dd><p><ul>
<li>A varint which is the total number of bytes of key payload, including any
overflow
<li>The initial portion of the payload that does not spill to overflow
pages.
<li>A 4-byte big-endian integer page number for the first page of the
overflow page list - omitted if all payload fits on the b-tree page.
</ul></p></dd>

<dt><p>Index B-Tree Interior Cell:</p></dt>
<dd><p><ul>
<li>A 4-byte big-ending page number which is the left child pointer.
<li>A varint which is the total number of bytes of key payload, including any
overflow
<li>The initial portion of the payload that does not spill to overflow
pages.
<li>A 4-byte big-endian integer page number for the first page of the
overflow page list - omitted if all payload fits on the b-tree page.
</ul></p></dd>
</dl></blockquote>

<p>The information above can be recast into a table format as follows:</p>

<center>
<i>B-tree Cell Format</i>
<table border=1 width="80%">
<tr><th rowspan=2>Datatype
    <th colspan=4>Appears in...
    <th rowspan=2>Description
<tr><th>Table Leaf
    <th>Table Interior
    <th>Index Leaf
    <th>Index Interior
<tr><td align=center valign=top>4-byte integer
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=left>Page number of left child
<tr><td align=center valign=top>varint
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=left>Number of bytes of payload
<tr><td align=center valign=top>varint
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=left>Rowid
<tr><td align=center valign=top>byte array
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=left>Payload
<tr><td align=center valign=top>4-byte integer
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&nbsp;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=center valign=top>&#x2714;
    <td align=left>Page number of first overflow page
</table></center>



<tr><td align=center valign=top>

<p>The amount of payload that spills onto overflow pages also depends on
the page type.  For the following computations, let U be the usable size
of a database page, the total page size less the reserved space at the
end of each page.  And let P be the payload size.</p>

<blockquote><dl>
<dt>Table B-Tree Leaf Cell:</dt>
<dd><p>
If the payload size P is less than U-36 then the entire payload is stored
on the b-tree page.  Let M be ((U-12)*32/255)-23.  If P is greater than U-35
then the number of byte stored on the b-tree page is the lessor of
M+((P-M)%(U-4)) and U-35.
</p></dd>

<dt>Table B-Tree Interior Cell:</dt>
<dd><p>
Interior pages of table b-trees have no payload and so there is never
any payload to spill.
</p></dd>

<dt>Index B-Tree Leaf Or Interior Cell:</dt>
<dd><p>
If the payload size P is less than ((U-12)*64/255)-22 then the entire
payload is stored on the b-tree page.  
Let M be ((U-12)*32/255)-23.  If P is greater than ((U-12)*64/255)-23
then the number of byte stored on the b-tree page is the lessor of
M+((P-M)%(U-4)) and ((U-12)*64/255)-23.
</p></dd>
</dl></blockquote>

<p>The overflow thresholds are designed to give a minimum fanout of
4 for index b-trees and to make sure enough of the payload
is on the b-tree page that the record header can usually be accessed
without consulting an overflow page.  In hindsight, the designers of
the SQLite b-tree logic realize that these thresholds could have been
made much simpler.  However, the computations cannot be now be changed
without resulting in an incompatible file format.  And the current computations
work well, even if they are a little complex.</p>

<h3>1.6 Cell Payload Overflow Pages</h3>

<p>When the payload of a b-tree cell is too large for the b-tree page,
the surplus is spilled onto overflow pages.  Overflow pages form a linked
list.  The first four bytes of each overflow page are a big-endian
integer which is the page number of the next page in the chain, or zero
for the final page in the chain.  The fifth byte through the last usable
byte are used to hold overflow content.</p>

<h3>1.7 Pointer Map or Ptrmap Pages</h3>

<p>Pointer map or ptrmap pages are extra pages inserted into the database
to make the operation of [auto_vacuum] and [incremental_vacuum] modes
more efficient.  Other page types in the database typically have pointers
from parent to child.  For example, a interior b-tree page contains pointers
to its child b-tree pages and an overflow chain has a pointer
from earlier to later links in the chain.  A ptrmap page contains linkage
information going in the opposite direction, from child to parent.</p>

<p>Ptrmap pages must exist in any database file which has a non-zero
largest root b-tree page value at offset 52 in the database header.
If the largest root b-tree page value is zero, then the database must not
contain ptrmap pages.</p>

<p>In a database with ptrmap pages, the first ptrmap page is page 2.
A ptrmap page consists of an array of 5-byte entries.  Let J be the
number of 5-byte entries that will fit in the usable space of a page.
(In other words, J=U/5.)  The first ptrmap page will contain back pointer
information for pages 3 through J+2, inclusive.  The next pointer map
page will be on page J+3 and that ptrmap page will provide back pointer
information for pages J+4 through 2*J+3 inclusive.  An so forth for
the entire database file.</p>

<p>In a database that uses ptrmap pages, all pages at locations identified
by the computation in the previous paragraph must be ptrmap page and no
other page may be a ptrmap page.  Except, if the byte-lock page happens to
fall on the same page number as a ptrmap page, then the ptrmap is moved
to the following page for that one case.</p>

<p>Each 5-byte entry on a ptrmap page provides back-link information about 
one of pages that immediately follow the pointer map.  If page B is
ptrmap page then back-link information about page B+1 is provided by
the first entry on the pointer map.  Information about page B+2 is
provided by the second entry.  And so forth.</p>

<p>Each 5-byte ptrmap entry consists of one byte of "page type" information
followed by a 4-byte big-endian page number.  Five page types are recognized:
</p>

<ol>
<li>A b-tree root page.  The
page number should be zero.
<li>A freelist page.  The page number should be
zero.
<li>The first page of a
cell payload overflow chain.  The page number is the b-tree page that
contains the cell whose content has overflowed.
<li>A page in an overflow chain
other than the first page.  The page number is the prior page of the
overflow chain.
<li>A non-root b-tree page.  The
page number is the parent b-tree page.
</ol>

<p>In any database file that contains ptrmap pages, all b-tree root pages 
must come before any non-root b-tree page, cell payload overflow page, or
freelist page.</p>

<h2>2.0 Record Format</h2>

<p>In the foregoing, the content of a table b-tree leaf page and the key
of any index b-tree page was characterized as an arbitrary sequence of bytes.
The discussion above talked about one keying being less than another, but
did not define what "less than" meant.  The current section will address
these deficiencies.</p>

<p>Payload, be it table content or index keys, is always in the "record
format".  The record format defines a sequence of values corresponding to
to columns in a table or index.  The record format specifies the number
of columns, the datatype of each column, and the content of each column.</p>

<p>The record format makes extensive use of the variable integer or varint
representation of 64-bit signed integers defined above.</p>

<p>A record contains a header and a body, in that order.  
The header begins with a single varint which determines the total number
of bytes in the header.  The varint value is the size of the header in
byte including the size varint itself.  Following the size varint are
one or more additional varints, one per column.  These additional varints
are called "serial type" numbers and
determine the datatype of each column, according to the following key:</p>

<center>
<i>Serial Type Codes Of The Record Format</i><br>
<table width="80%" border=1>
<tr><th>Serial Type<th>Content Size<th>Meaning
<tr><td valign=top align=center>0<td valign=top align=center>0<td align=left>
NULL
<tr><td valign=top align=center>1<td valign=top align=center>1<td align=left>
8-bit twos-complement integer
<tr><td valign=top align=center>2<td valign=top align=center>2<td align=left>
Big-endian 16-bit twos-complement integer
<tr><td valign=top align=center>3<td valign=top align=center>3<td align=left>
Big-endian 24-bit twos-complement integer
<tr><td valign=top align=center>4<td valign=top align=center>4<td align=left>
Big-endian 32-bit twos-complement integer
<tr><td valign=top align=center>5<td valign=top align=center>6<td align=left>
Big-endian 48-bit twos-complement integer
<tr><td valign=top align=center>6<td valign=top align=center>8<td align=left>
Big-endian 64-bit twos-complement integer
<tr><td valign=top align=center>7<td valign=top align=center>8<td align=left>
Big-endian IEEE 754-2008 64-bit floating point number
<tr><td valign=top align=center>8<td valign=top align=center>0<td align=left>
Integer constant 0.  Only available for schema format 4 and higher.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>9<td valign=top align=center>0<td align=left>
Integer constant 1.  Only available for schema format 4 and higher.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>10,11
    <td valign=top align=center>&nbsp;<td align=left>
<i>Not used.  Reserved for expansion.</i>
<tr><td valign=top align=center>N&#x2265;12 and even
    <td valign=top align=center>(N-12)/2<td align=left>
A string in the database encoding and (N-12)/2 bytes in length.
The nul terminator is omitted.
<tr><td valign=top align=center>N&#x2265;13 and odd
    <td valign=top align=center>(N-13)/2<td align=left>
A BLOB that is (N-13)/2 bytes in length
</table></center>

<p>Note that because of the way varints are defined, the header size varint
and serial type varints will usually consist of a single byte.  The
serial type varints for large strings and BLOBs might extend to two or three
byte varints, but that is the exception rather than the rule. 
The varint format is very efficient at coding the record header.</p>

<p>The values for each column in the record immediately follow the header.
Note that for serial types 0, 8, 9, 12, and 13, the value is zero bytes in
length.  If all columns are of these types then the body section of the
record is empty.</p>

<h3>2.1 Sort Order</h3>

<p>The order of keys in an index b-tree is determined by the sort order of
the records that the keys represent.  Record comparison proceeds column
by column.  Columns of a record are examined from left to right.  The
first pair of columns that are not equal determines the relative order
of the two records.  The sort order of individual columns is as
follows:</p>

<ol>
<li>NULL values (serial type 0) sort first
<li>Numeric values (serial types 1 through 9) sort next and in numeric order
<li>Text values (even serial types 12 and larger) sort next in the order
    determined by the columns collating function
<li>BLOB values (odd serial types 13 and larger) sort last in order 
    determined by memcmp().
</ol>

<p>A collating function for each column is necessary in order to compute
the order of text fields.
