wouldn’t an XML database be easier?

An interesting skim, but it would have been more meaningful if it had tackled text documents or spreadsheets to show what additional functionality would be enabled with those beyond "versioning".

Maybe it's just me, but I see the presentation functionality as one of the less used aspects of the OpenOffice family.

I'm a fan of both as a Linux user. Interesting thought experiment.

What if instead of API's for data sets, we simply placed a sqlite file onto a web server as a static asset, so you could just periodically do a GET and have a local copy.

Dr. Hipp occasionally gets on a soapbox and extolls the virtue of sqlite databases for use as an application file format. He also preaches about the superiority of Fossil over Git. His arguments generally make sense. I tolerate his sermons because he is one of the truly great software developers of our time, and a personal hero of mine.

If I remember correctly Mendix project file format is simply a sqlite db. I thought the designer was lazy but it turns out it's a reasonable decision.

Recently, DuckDB team raise similar question on DataLake catalog format. Why not just use SQL database for that ? It's simpler and more efficient as well.

It seems like it would be relatively straightforward to make an sqlite based file format and just have users add a plugin if for some reason they couldn't upgrade their older version of LibreOffice etc. I agree with the other commenter who mentioned that the benefits for text and spreadsheet files needs more explanation. But it seems like a good enough idea to have a LibreOffice working group perform a more in depth study. If significant memory reduction is real and that would translate to fewer crashes, it would be a huge boost even if it had no other benefits, IMHO.

Juggling all the fragments inside the database, garbage collecting all the unused ones, and maintaining consistency are all quite challenging in this use case.

I've being trying out SQLite for a side project of mine, a virtual whiteboard, I haven't quite got my head around it, but it seems to be much less of a bother than interacting with file system APIs so far. The problem I haven't really solved is how sync and maybe collaboration is going to interact with it, so far I have:

1. Plaintext format (JSON or similar) or SQLite dump files versioned by git

2. Some sort of modern local first CRDT thing (Turso, libsql, Electric SQL)

3. Server/Client architecture that can also be run locally

Has anyone had any success in this department?