That's a good point, one which needs to be understood by API users. The project's founder and chief is very careful about expanding the set of defined behaviors promised by the API. There is a long-term (decades) commitment to backward compatibility that is made harder to meet as the API and its actual promises is grown. Also, as I mentioned earlier, a NULL statement pointer only yields a certain NULL return when SQLITE_API_ARMOUR has been #define'd for the library build. Otherwise, the code goes on the use the statement pointer and the possible result set expands enormously (and undefinedly.)