id,node_id,number,title,user,state,locked,assignee,milestone,comments,created_at,updated_at,closed_at,author_association,pull_request,body,repo,type,active_lock_reason,performed_via_github_app,reactions,draft,state_reason
421551434,MDU6SXNzdWU0MjE1NTE0MzQ=,419,"Default to opening files in mutable mode, special option for immutable files",9599,closed,0,,4305096,10,2019-03-15T14:39:27Z,2019-05-16T15:14:32Z,2019-05-16T15:14:31Z,OWNER,,"One of the original ideas behind Datasette was that serving immutable data makes everything way easier. Two examples: You don't have to worry about SQLite concurrency and you can bundle the database inside a Docker container and deploy it to immutable hosting. See [The interesting ideas in Datasette](https://simonwillison.net/2018/Oct/4/datasette-ideas/) for more on this.

I'm beginning to see a much stronger case for being able to serve mutable data as well.

SQLite is actually perfectly capable of handling reads against a database that is also being written to, even if the writes are coming from another process. https://www.sqlite.org/wal.htm

There are all kinds of interesting use-cases which Datasette is currently unsuitable for due to its insistence on immutable databases. Some examples:

* Continually run Datasette against a SQLite database updated by another process, e.g. Firefox bookmarks
* Projects where a cron runs every X minutes and writes new entries gathered from other sources to SQLite
* Tail a log file, write those log updates to a SQLite file, view recent log entries in Datasette

This is also relevant to #417, Datasette Library.",107914493,issue,,,"{""url"": ""https://api.github.com/repos/simonw/datasette/issues/419/reactions"", ""total_count"": 0, ""+1"": 0, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",,completed