An SQLite Annual Maintenance Agreement is an affordable way to get expedited bug fixes and quick and accurate answers to common SQLite programming questions such as these:
"How much memory does SQLite require to run and what can I do to minimize its memory usage?"
"Can I rewrite my queries to make them run faster?"
"Explain how the paging subsystem works. Does it really protect the database from corruption during a power loss?"
"Will SQLite work correctly in my customized multi-threaded environment?"
"What does this error message mean, really?"
SQLite is open-source which gives you full access to the code and there is an active development community on the web that you can go to for free help. So if you spend a little time and effort you can probably answer all of these questions yourself. But for many commercial users, it makes more sense to have an expert at hand - someone you can call to get an authoritative answer in a hurry. That is what an annual maintenance subscription is all about.
The following are the services you can receive with an annual maintenance subscription:
You can communicate directly and privately (via email) with the developers of SQLite and receive fast and authoritative answers to technical questions about SQLite.
You can talk directly and privately with the SQLite developers to receive advice on schema and query design and optimization and on the design and implementation of applications using SQLite.
We will be happy to advise you on how to do custom builds of SQLite to meet your specific requirements.
Any bugs you report or express concern over will be given priority handling and will usually be fixed right away.
If your support needs increase, you can escalate your level of support with a single phone call.
We will send you send you tarballs or ZIP archives containing the very latest (unreleased) source code to SQLite upon request.
We will listen attentively to any concerns or suggestions you have about future plans for SQLite and give your remarks considerable weight in making our decisions.
An annual maintenance subscription provides entry-level support for SQLite. In order for us to keep down the cost of a maintenance subscription and to provide a convenient fixed-price package, we must make certain limitations on the amount of service you can receive under an annual maintenance subscription.
Contact time is limited to 20 hours per year. Actually, we do not normally keep track of contact time and we have never had to cut anybody off. We include this limitation to set clear expectations and to prevent abuse. If you think you might need more than 20 hours of help over the course of 12 months, please contact us to negotiate a custom support contract tailored to your specific needs.
We will make our best effort to respond to your questions. Normally, you should hear back from us within minutes. But there is no guarantee of response time. Sometimes a reply might take as long as 24 hours. If there are holidays or vacations involved, more than 24 hours might be required - but this is very rare. If you do not get a reply to a question by the next business day, it is safe to assume that your email got lost; please resubmit or phone our office to see what is going on.
A maintenance subscription does not cover on-site visits or consultation.
Bug fixes are applied to the latest version of SQLite. If you find a bug and we fix it, we can send you a patch against the latest version of SQLite. If you are using an older version of SQLite, that same patch will often work for you. But there are no guarantees that it will. We will work with you to help you integrate the fix into whatever version of SQLite you are using, but we cannot promise that we will be able to fix older versions of SQLite and may require you to upgrade to a newer version of SQLite in order to take advantage of the latest bug fixes.
We are happy and eager to offer you advice on how you can write your application code or design your SQL schema. But we will not write code for you as part of a maintenance subscription. Any new features requests you submit will be given priority consideration, but that is no guarantee that the requested features will be implemented.
If you have an application bug and it is unclear if the bug is in SQLite or in your code, we will be happy to advise you on how to better isolate the bug and we will attempt to reproduce the problem in our copy of SQLite. We will debug and support SQLite, but please understand that we are unable to help you to debug and support your application.
A maintenance subscription is usable by a single development team within your organization. For the purposes of this paragraph, a development team is a group of developers that work for the same company (as either employees or contractors) and that all know each others names. Sometimes large firms have multiple development teams using SQLite at different sites and often in different parts of the world. In such cases, we ask that each team secure their own maintenance subscription.
If you need more support than is provided by an annual maintenance subscription, then you might be interested in a Technical Support Agreement or even becoming an SQLite Consortium Member. If none of these options meet your needs, we will be happy to discuss a customized technical support package designed specifically for you. Contact us at the address given below for additional information.
A maintenance subscription costs $1500 (US) for one year. You can sign up online and pay by credit card or PayPal. Or, on the same online form you can request an invoice or quote. If you have any trouble with the online form, or if you just prefer to communicate directly with another human being, call +1.704.948.4565 or send email to sqlite@hwaci.com and we will be happy to assist you.