SQLite Forum

Difference on NULL when WITHOUT ROWID
Login
Without rowid tables must have non-null primary key fields.

[](https://www.sqlite.org/withoutrowid.html)

Section 2.4:

> NOT NULL is enforced on every column of the PRIMARY KEY in a WITHOUT ROWID table. This is in accordance with the SQL standard. Each column of a PRIMARY KEY is supposed to be individually NOT NULL. However, NOT NULL was not enforced on PRIMARY KEY columns by early versions of SQLite due to a bug. By the time that this bug was discovered, so many SQLite databases were already in circulation that the decision was made not to fix this bug for fear of breaking compatibility. So, ordinary rowid tables in SQLite violate the SQL standard and allow NULL values in PRIMARY KEY fields. But WITHOUT ROWID tables do follow the standard and will throw an error on any attempt to insert a NULL into a PRIMARY KEY column.