Your problem is not precisely stated, so it is hard to know what is going on. Please know that in WAL mode, a connection should be able to read the database at any time, regardless of what other connections are doing with the database at the same moment. There are some rare exceptions to the above. For example, if the system takes a power loss in the middle of a transaction, then the next time the database file is opened, it must be recovered. This recovery is completely automatic. However, while the first process to open the database is busy running recovery, no other processes will be able to access the database file. There are other equally obscure exceptions. Without knowing more about your situation, we cannot easily speculate on why you are having difficulty.