Database Format
Overview
Section titled “Overview”Databases are stored in a single file using SQLite. This is a very common general-purpose database format, and there are many tools available to access it externally, such as DB Browser for SQLite.
Schemas
Section titled “Schemas”The database table structure is maintained in the project’s source code repository. See the SQL creation files in the src-tauri/ directory.
Move Encoding
Section titled “Move Encoding”Rather than storing moves as readable text (which would consume excessive space), the application uses binary encoding. Each move is encoded as a single byte representing its position in the legal moves list.
The move list is generated with Shakmaty, and the encoded number is the index of the move in that list.
This compact encoding means each move takes only 1 byte of storage, making databases significantly smaller than PGN-based alternatives.
This documentation is based on the original En Croissant docs by Francisco Salgueiro.