SpatiaLite itself simply implements a basic subset of the SQL with Geometry Types environment proposed by OGC; but SpatiaLite directly integrates others very popular open source libraries, such as: the GEOS library implements sophisticated spatial analysis functions GEOS was originally developed to support the PostGIS spatial extension for PostgreSQL; so, SpatiaLite can perform any kind of spatial analysis, and in exactly the same way PostGIS will do the PROJ.4 library implements coordinate transformation between different Coordinate System References it supports the very popular and widespread EPSG geodetic database, thus allowing to use any known CSR [at least, the main ones] the LIBICONV library implements support for locale_charset, thus effectively supporting any exotic language, such as Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic etc the SQLite library implements a full SQL data engine; SQLite’s latest version 3.6.2 includes a native implementation for RTree, thus effectively supporting Spatial Indices

All this put together make SpatiaLite to be a quite complete and powerful Spatial DBMS. The main strength points of the SQLite + SpatiaLite couple are: no need for complex installation procedures no DBMS administration at all a very low system footprint an elementary complexity, combined with a good performance level a big simplicity of use