> To me that suggests that the pointer is still alive in the DLL. <i>If that is the case, then an API to return the remaining portion of the SQL would be handy.</i> The pointer is nothing more than a single value, easily passed by value. The issue is whether that pointer points to something that can be referenced. My point is that is probably does not upon return to the C# call site. There is no way for a heretofore nonexistent SQLite API to later "return the remaining portion of the SQL" unless the connection were to store it away for future reference, which would also require a way to cease storing it. I would bet long odds against that happening, particularly because the existing API already permits the operations you would like to perform. (It does not support them in quite the manner you are thinking, but it does support the work-around that I suggested earlier.) Your possibly neat workaround could be made to work. With very similar memory allocation, you could just extract the single SQL statements from the statement glom and do the prepare/step/finalize on each one. That would be more straightforward, IMO.