Compiling apache with sqllite, um, support?

[Mark Jones <markandconnie.jones@xxxxxxxxx>]

I recently took the plunge and compiled my own apache2 for my Ubuntu (9.10) server.  I ran configure with -n and was looking over the output to try to learn a bit about what's happening.  I noticed at one point that configure was checking to see if sqlite3 files were available (they weren't).  I was able to locate information that the sqlite dev package contained these files, installed it, and saw configure acknowledge their presence.

This was cool, as I want to use sqllite.  But I'm still curious.

-What does it mean that configure found these files?  Do I say I compiled apache "with sqllite3 support"?

if so,

-Is that good?  Necessary?  Presumably I can write scripts all day using sqllite *without* doing the above.  Do I write my scripts any differently or have I just improved server performance?  What if I do my development this way and end up with a production host whose server is not so configured?

Not that sqlite is the end all here, it's just an example.  I'm just as curious about the python mods.