I hope you aren't trying to say that one should try to get the DBMS schema right up front, for all time. That path leads to ossification and denormalization. My largest SQLite-based app has had *dozens* of schema changes over its lifetime, and more than once, I've had to add a `DEFAULT` clause per my [other response][1] in order to allow the alteration. That said, it is exceedingly rare for these modifications to be done to empty — or even empty-able — tables, so adding the special-case check probably couldn't kick in very often in practice. Perhaps this is your actual point? [1]: https://sqlite.org/forum/forumpost/364402a056