Philip O’Toole

Philip O’Toole’s site is a personal engineering blog rather than a product page or documentation hub. Its centerpiece is a long-running series of posts about rqlite, the open-source project that puts a Raft log in front of SQLite and replicates writes across a cluster. Around that core, the author writes about distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them.

The content mixes technical deep dives with candid retrospectives. Readers can find explanations of how rqlite is tested, a story about finding a bug in SQLite, notes on replicating SQLite using Raft consensus, and lessons from seven years of open-source database development. Posts on engineering management and the economics of open-source software broaden the scope beyond code.

The site suits backend engineers, database enthusiasts, and engineering managers who value experience-based writing. It is especially relevant for anyone evaluating or running rqlite, or curious about the trade-offs of building a distributed database on top of SQLite. Readers looking for step-by-step tutorials or API references should consult the project’s own documentation instead.

A good approach is to start with the rqlite anniversary posts for context, then move to the testing and SQLite bug articles for technical detail. The management and open-source economics pieces work well as a separate reading track. Overall, it is a thoughtful, low-volume blog worth following for its honest perspective on long-lived software projects.