We are happy to announce a new release of SQLCipher, version 3.4.0. This release is based upon the upstream version of SQLite 3.11.0, which includes significant performance optimizations to SQLite, you may see up to a 22% performance improvement over the previous version for the same operations.
There are few new features we would like to draw attention to:
- JSON support
- FTS5 support
- PCL support
- PRAGMA updates
- WatckKit support
JSON support is a relatively new feature included within SQLite as an extension called json1. The json1 extension includes a set of scalar functions for composing, extracting, and manipulating JSON content - a very welcome addition for applications that often interface with JSON.
SQLCipher has long included support for both FTS3, and FTS4, the full-text search facility provided by SQLite. With the 3.4.0 release, we have also included FTS5 support which address issues that could not be fixed in FTS4 without breaking backward compatibility. A few highlights of FTS5 include:
- FTS5 supports “ORDER BY rank” for returning results in order of decreasing relevancy
- FTS5 features an API allowing users to create custom auxiliary functions for advanced ranking and text processing applications
- FTS5 recognizes Unicode separator characters and case equivalence by default
The client libraries found in SQLCipher for Windows Phone and SQLCipher for Windows Runtime have been updated, continuing our transition from sqlite-net to the PCL compatible version based on SQLite.Net-PCL. Upgrading existing applications is rather seamless, requiring minimal code changes generally localized to how the connection to the database is made. The addition of PCL support allows for sharing much of the data model source code, minimizing duplication across platforms.
There are two PRAGMA updates that have been included in SQLCipher 3.4.0. First, we have deprecated the setter PRAGMA for manipulating the cipher used at runtime. Currently, you can still adjust the cipher used, on crypto providers that support switching, however this will return an error state and will be removed in a future release. We have added a new PRAGMA, PRAGMA cipher_provider_version that will provide the version of the crypto provider that was compiled within SQLCipher if available, this information will only be available following the keying of a database.
We are now offering commercial builds of SQLCipher targeting Apple WatchKit supporting i386, armv7k, x86_64, allowing you to further secure databases stored on the Apple Watch. 
Availability
SQLCipher in source format is directly available here. The community edition of SQLCipher for Android is available via AAR packaging using the following line:
compile 'net.zetetic:android-database-sqlcipher:3.4.0@aar'
Updates to commercial builds are available now. Information regarding the purchase of both commercial and enterprise offerings of SQLCipher can be found here. The 3.4.0 version of SQLCipher includes many new, exciting features we are excited to share with you. Please give it a spin!