Lately SQLite and MySQL have become big and popular uses for pretty much all scripting and programming languages that are in major use, such as PHP, C/C++, Perl, Python, Java, etc. SQL provides a very very fast and clean/easy method to store, search, and manipulate data. SQL tables are far faster than the antiquated INI file use that games and programs used to use to store various settings and data for programs, however it is slow and more bulky than a simple SQL database. Recently, more and more programs have switched over to use of *.db (database) files to store information, and basic ircd's and IRC services have been using them for some time now to store information with a fast reliable way to search and manipulate the data within.
Currently the only way to use SQLite in mIRC is to use a dll with accompaning script, and although this is useful to a point, if you want to pass around your script you would also have to pass around the dll and script. It would be nicer, and what I'm suggesting, (and I know of at least two others so far that would support such an addition) is to have SQLite capabilities built into mIRC, perhaps even have mIRC make use of them for storing variables as this would greatly increase mIRC's processing and read/write speed to variables, compared to the slow (by at least 140x) use of INI files.
Although there are hash tables, these are still rather limited to memory space (though not a concern in the modern computer) and still not as fast as an SQL table. Another advantage of using SQL tables to store the mIRC variables would be the ability to have seperate variables per script, permanent, and perhaps even with the same name. This means that if you get a script from someone else you wouldn't have to worry about the variables overwriting stuff from one script to another, and calling variables from another script would still be just as easy as it is now, you'd just have to access a different table within the same database file.
