Apologies. but I haven't looked at this thread for some time. I've set email notifications now! I used Grafpup for my system, as it provides a password to protect the system from interference.One thing I have been wondering about Simon. I know Motion can be compiled to work with mysql. However, Puppy Linux 2.17.1 seems to come with sqlite3 (version 3.3.5). Do you know if that could be usefully used with Motion at all? Would maybe save having to install mysql, for example, in order to get database functionality of some sort.
To answer your question I know nothing of SQL or SQL lite, sorry.
I think the most difficult part of a system such as this is the GUI. Everyone has their own requirements and wishlist!
I have a set of shell scripts which do what I want, but there's no GUI to that as such, just log files. I did some extension of the Motion Statistics Page (see the Motion wiki) which does "what I want".