Small. Fast. Reliable.
Choose any three.

## SQLite Release 3.8.8.1 On 2015-01-20

1. Fix a bug in the sorting logic, present since version 3.8.4, that can cause output to appear in the wrong order on queries that contains an ORDER BY clause, a LIMIT clause, and that have approximately 60 or more columns in the result set. Ticket f97c4637102a3ae72b79.
2. SQLITE_SOURCE_ID: "2015-01-20 16:51:25 f73337e3e289915a76ca96e7a05a1a8d4e890d55"
3. SHA1 for sqlite3.c: 33987fb50dcc09f1429a653d6b47672f5a96f19e

Changes carried forward from version 3.8.8 (2015-01-16):

New Features:

1. Added the PRAGMA data_version command that can be used to determine if a database file has been modified by another process.
2. Added the SQLITE_CHECKPOINT_TRUNCATE option to the sqlite3_wal_checkpoint_v2() interface, with corresponding enhancements to PRAGMA wal_checkpoint.
3. Added the sqlite3_stmt_scanstatus() interface, available only when compiled with SQLITE_ENABLE_STMT_SCANSTATUS.
4. 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.
5. Added the SQLITE_ENABLE_API_ARMOR compile-time option.
6. Added the SQLITE_REVERSE_UNORDERED_SELECTS compile-time option.
7. Added the SQLITE_SORTER_PMASZ compile-time option and SQLITE_CONFIG_PMASZ start-time option.
8. 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.
9. The number of rows in a VALUES clause is no longer limited by SQLITE_LIMIT_COMPOUND_SELECT.
10. Added the eval.c loadable extension that implements an eval() SQL function that will recursively evaluate SQL.

    Performance Enhancements:

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

    Bug fixes:

14. Ensure durability following a power loss with "PRAGMA journal_mode=TRUNCATE" by calling fsync() right after truncating the journal file.
15. 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.
16. Make sure ORDER BY puts rows in ascending order even if the DISTINCT operator is implemented using a descending index. Fix for ticket c5ea805691bfc4204b1cb9e.
17. 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.
18. Fix obscure crash bugs found by american fuzzy lop. Ticket a59ae93ee990a55.
19. 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:

20. Disable the use of the strchrnul() C-library routine unless it is specifically enabled using the -DHAVE_STRCHRNULL compile-time option.
21. Improvements to the effectiveness and accuracy of the likelihood(), likely(), and unlikely() SQL hint functions.

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.