I'm developing a program that should be as small and not extensive as possible and also fully portable, however, it contains many resource files, settings etc.. So I've had to make an external file that would store all these data. I was thinking about a dll file, but as far as I know it can store only icons, I took under consideration also WinAPI resources, but I excluded this way, because I want to be able to manage my resources even without recompiling the source. Finally I ended up with SQLite database. I use external database file secured with AES and sqlite.dll included in binary in my source. The process is then like this: the program loads dll library to memory, decrypts the database file to a temporary location, loads it to memory, deletes it from the temporary location and loads all resource files saved as binary in the database to controls in GUI or makes temporary files from them. It can also read and write settings, strings for UI and anything else saved in the database. When the program exits it flushes the databse from memory to disk, encrypts it and replaces the old one. The cons of this solution are: I have to load the database to the memory and keep it there until the program exits, the database is unsecured for about one or two seconds everytime when the program loads/unloads the database to/from memory.
So I'm asking, are there any better solutions for storing these kinds of data and that would suit my conditions or at least a way to load only a part of the database?