SQLite's write lock and pysqlite's clunky transaction state-machine are a toxic combination for multi-threaded applications. Unless you are very diligent about keeping your write transactions as short as possible, you can easily wind up with one thread accidentally holding a write transaction open for an unnecessarily long time. Threads that are waiting to write will then have a much greater likelihood of timing out while waiting for the lock, giving the illusion of poor performance.
