SNKV – SQLite's B-tree as a key-value store (C/C++ and Python bindings)

SQLite has six layers: SQL parser → query planner → VDBE → B-tree → pager → OS. (https://sqlite.org/arch.html) For key-value workloads you only need the bottom three.

SNKV cuts the top three layers and talks directly to SQLite's B-tree engine. No SQL strings. No query planner. No VM. Just put/get/delete on the same storage core that powers SQLite.

Python:

pip install snkv

from snkv import KVStore

with KVStore("mydb.db") as db: db["hello"] = "world" print(db["hello"]) # b"world"

C/C++ (single-header, drop-in):

#define SNKV_IMPLEMENTATION #include "snkv.h"

KVStore *db; kvstore_open("mydb.db", &db, KVSTORE_JOURNAL_WAL); kvstore_put(db, "key", 3, "value", 5);

Benchmarks vs SQLite WITHOUT ROWID (1M records, identical settings):

Sequential writes +57% Random reads +68% Sequential scan +90% Random updates +72% Random deletes +104% Exists checks +75% Mixed workload +84% Bulk insert +10%

Honest tradeoffs: - LMDB beats it on raw reads (memory-mapped) - RocksDB beats it on write-heavy workloads (LSM-tree) - sqlite3 CLI won't open the database (schema layer is bypassed by design)

What you get: ACID, WAL concurrency, column families, crash safety — with less overhead for read-heavy KV workloads.