sqlite, afs and svn 1.7

Hi all,

So apparently SVN 1.7 uses Sqlite to store working copy metadata. It
also uses Sqlite to store repository metadata, but only if repo-sharing
is enabled. Is that correct?

In our department, we use AFS for network storage. We have both our
repository on it, and generally put our working copies on it as well.
Occasionally this means that Sqlite databases get corrupted--a brief web
search reveals that this could be because AFS only has file-level
locking, but lies about also having byte-range locking.

Our repository is still using whatever format was in 1.4, so it doesn't
use Sqlite. Is it safe to upgrade as long as we disable repo-sharing, or
will SVN use Sqlite for some other reason anyway?

Is there a way to turn off using Sqlite for the working copies, or some
other way of safely using working copies on AFS? Or do we have to
downgrade to 1.6?

(The specific version of SVN we're using is 1.7.1, by the way).

Thanks,
-Matyas Selmeci
University of Wisconsin-Madison