And, at the same time, it's a very underused piece of tech Every time you think you need a custom file format for a given piece of software... you most likely

And, at the same time, it's a very underused piece of tech Every time you think you need a custom file format for a given piece of software... you most likely don't. Just use SQLite. You can use the standard OS file Open/Save dialog box and users will never know the difference. Yes, that means you now have to write SQL statements to manipulate your data. But that also means that you can get lots of complicated data structures on disk and can manipulate them easily, even outside your own software - just fire up the sqlite CLI and point to your file. There are GUIs as well. Things like UNDO/REDO can also be had almost trivially (see https://www.sqlite.org/undoredo.html https://www.sqlite.org/undoredo.html) Sometimes this also means you don't need an external RDBMS even for web apps. I've seen so many apps which co-locate a small database in the same box that might as well have been a single sqlite file. I'm actually maintaining one right now that, although relatively important, will only ever be a single box. But sqlite wasn't 'enterprisey' enough, had to use PG. For a couple of tables. https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html Subscribe for my next rant on another underused piece of tech... Lua :)