One thing to remember when your SQLite, is that a lot of the 'conventional wisdom' for using a database is just wrong. With standard client/server databases, it is important to minimize the number of statements, as each statement might involve a network transaction, so is slow. For SQLite, this doesn't hold, SQLite is just part of your program. Instead, it is better to make the statements simpler so it can parse them faster, and reuse the statement. Maximizing the number in a TRANSACTION might make sense, but rather than make the transaction a single statement, make it an explicit transaction with a lot of statements. That way SQLite works with simpler smaller chunks and all goes well.