Thank you Larry for your fun and insightful reply... The reason for not wanting to root is that I wanted to develop an application / extension that others could easily use without rooting their phone. If it were just for me, fine, but if I want others to use it who may not be as enthusiastic about rooting, wouldn't it be great if it could work? When you said its a clue that the comment noexec is relevant, How can you say that when the permission says RWXRWX--- Doesn't that say that the base user should be able to execute? Unless for some reason my app (macrodroid) is somehow belonging to the "other" group. While you are likely right that my issue is with my environment and not with SQLite, my hope is that other SQLite enthusiasts may have bumped up against this issue and be able to help with how to solve it.