You forgot the biggest limitation of sqlar which is lack of support for large files (max is 4GB IIRC). I think this is really unfortunate since a sqlite based a

You forgot the biggest limitation of sqlar which is lack of support for large files (max is 4GB IIRC). I think this is really unfortunate since a sqlite based archive file format could be really neat and easily support a lot of the features you mention. Additionally, I think it is really cool to have the ability to inspect the file format using SQL. If sqlar were actually more usable, it would also be really neat for application formats since you could have additional metadata for your application in addition to the archive. Instead of having some magic MANIFEST file for Java jar files, that data could be stored in a separate table with its own indices.