If SQLite is faster, the problem is the zip library you use. SQLite has a major draw back (and yes, I love SQLite and built a lot of things around it over the

If SQLite is faster, the problem is the zip library you use. SQLite has a major draw back (and yes, I love SQLite and built a lot of things around it over the years): the blob you get from the DB cannot be mmap and you have to copy it to somewhere else. For zip files, as long as the file is not compressed, you can mmap it (or it is compressed using some exotic encoding such as PVRTC) just fine.