[wenc]

Schema-on-read vs Schema-on-write are definitely relevant concepts.

I think SQLite sort of straddles the two -- it's sort of a loose schema-on-write (with type affinity to its base types), and schema-on-read (with respect to more complex types which is inferred from what is stored in base types)

[mumblemumble]

Agreed. Which kind of makes it even more complicated to talk about. Whether its approach offers the best of both worlds, or the worst of both words, depends on your application, and the dividing line doesn't cleanly follow any of the distinctions we normally make among types of application.