> Torsten basically you are suggesting that PRAGMA would never work at all with my 'do not strcmp() the sql at all, always begin a transaction' approach?

No. Most pragmas should still work and getting the current setting of a pragma should also work.

I was only referring to http://www.sqlite.org/pragma.html#pragma_foreign_keys

Quote:

> This pragma is a no-op within a transaction; foreign key constraint enforcement may only be enabled or disabled when there is no pending BEGIN or SAVEPOINT.

I did not see such a restriction for other pragmas though I admit that I did not reread the list in full.