As tempting as that may be, the ability to enforce ANSI SQL constraints (not null, unique, check, foreign key, etc.) could prevent many types of configuration errors.

If you want to grep everything in a sqlite database, then ".dump" it.

  $ echo "create table myconfig(param text, value text);
  insert into myconfig values('scrollbar', 'wide');
  insert into myconfig values('verbose', 'no');" | sqlite3 myconfig.db

  $ sqlite3 myconfig.db '.dump myconfig' | grep verbose

  INSERT INTO "myconfig" VALUES('verbose','no');