rqlite supports loading a cluster directly from a SQLite dump file. This is a fast and efficient manner to bootstrap a system from an existing SQLite database, or to restore from an existing [node backup](https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite/blob/master/doc/BACKUPS.md). An example restore is shown below.
The following example shows a trivial database being generated by sqlite3, dumped to a file, and then loaded into an rqlite node listening on localhost.
```bash
~ $ sqlite3 restore.sqlite
SQLite version 3.14.1 2016-08-11 18:53:32
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> CREATE TABLE foo (id integer not null primary key, name text);