I don't see how your proposed solution affects either your first or second cases. "What if someone edits the sqlite file via sqlite rather than the config file

I don't see how your proposed solution affects either your first or second cases. "What if someone edits the sqlite file via sqlite rather than the config file?" - well, you've just introduced complexity by making them separate, and disparately maintained files. Previously, there was no config file, and you didn't have this problem. "What if sqlite3 goes out of business? How will we edit the config files? Where can we purchase sqlite3 support?" - your proposed solution does not address this at all. You are still dependent upon sqlite3. "So now we can't even invoke the server, we need to invoke some complicated shell script? Sounds like a maintenance nightmare." - doesn't address this at all, and this argument is orthogonal to the other arguments anyway. While you might be able to make the argument for preferring a config file to SQLite3 (which is an implementation detail), your solution badly hacks together a hydra of both. Go back to the drawing board :).