XOWA

XOWA is a program for viewing of offline copies of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis. These copies are stored in SQLite files with the extension ".xowa"; they may also have the extension ".sqlite", although this does not seem to be in current use. Wikis up for download online are always split between several of these files: a "core" (index), "file core" (media index), file data, and media data. XOWA either stores pre-generated HTML, which takes up less space, or raw wiki markup, which is slower to view because of the need for extra rendering.

There seems to be much more activity around the ZIM format, which has the same purpose (although it can only hold rendered HTML pages), and software that uses it.

Software

 * XOWA downloads

Sample Files

 * English-language wikis inside ZIP files
 * Gujarati-language wikis likewise encapsulated (smaller file size)

Links

 * Homepage
 * Github page
 * XOWA SourceForge page (Unused; development has been moved to GitHub)
 * Information on generating XOWA databases