How about starting with something like this: CREATE TABLE email( id INTEGER AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, s_id INTEGER, r_id

How about starting with something like this: CREATE TABLE email( id INTEGER AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, s_id INTEGER, r_id INTEGER, subject VARCHAR, header VARCHAR, body VARCHAR ); CREATE TABLE contacts( id INTEGER AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, email. VARCHAR NOT NULL, name VARCHAR ); CREATE TABLE attachments( id INTEGER AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, email_id INTEGER NOT NULL, attachm BLOG NOT NULL ); in SQLite? (But in my opinion, storing in e.g. Lucene as full-text indexed text collection makes more sense for fast & flexible search.) EDIT: Python, PHP and Perl have libraries to read MBOX format and write SQLite easily (= elss than a screen of code).