Executive Summary

An SQLite database file with a defined schema often makes an excellent application file format. Here are a dozen reasons why this is so:

  1. Simplified Application Development
  2. Single-File Documents
  3. High-Level Query Language
  4. Accessible Content
  5. Cross-Platform
  6. Atomic Transactions
  7. Incremental And Continuous Updates
  8. Easily Extensible
  9. Performance
  10. Concurrent Use By Multiple Processes
  11. Multiple Programming Languages
  12. Better Applications

Each of these points will be described in more detail below, after first considering more closely the meaning of "application file format". See also the short version of this whitepaper.

What Is An Application File Format?

An "application file format" is the file format used to persist application state to disk or to exchange information between programs. There are thousands of application file formats in use today. Here are just a few examples: