Actually, there is the simpler possibility to check if there is the actual change, although it might not be worth it. Data of each row is encoded using a documented format; it can compare that with the original data to see if it changed, just by length compare and memcmp. What I think would be better is to be able to substitute your own btree implementations (which includes the pager too), including shims; this way you can implement it by yourself easily enough if you require it.