SQLite can have many readers and a single writer with WAL, so a many read transactions can exist whilst the writers move the db state forward.
It's a bit tricky since if you hold open that old connection, the WAL could grow without bound and cannot be checkpointed back into the main database. What do we do when the WAL gets unreasonably large (e.g. bigger than the database)? Cancel old cursors so we can finally checkpoint? Will that be annoying for app developers to deal with, e.g. causing errors when traffic is high?
SQLite itself calls an open database a "connection" even though there's no actual network involved.
To be honest this is an edge case. But I often start a read transaction on a SQLite connection just so I know multiple queries are reading from the same state (and to ensure state has not been changed between queries).