Yes, it's still terrible for the consumer of the data. But I like it not because of that. The positive thing I feel when reading about this, is that it dramati

Yes, it's still terrible for the consumer of the data. But I like it not because of that. The positive thing I feel when reading about this, is that it dramatically lowers the barrier for the producer of the data to expose it in a meaningful way. While previously it was necessary to think about the format and write code to expose the data while now its possible to just throw the data over a wall. You could use a framework to automate the first thing, but this would be specific to one programming language, while the second approach works with all languages. So it lowers the total effort to get to the goal, effectively side-stepping the "have to implement framework or serialization code" issue. Warning: heavy speculation below So if more people would build sites using this technique, the pressure for better tools (at a higher level than right now) for consumers would increase, so these would be built by someone. As you have a proper standard (there is only one SQLite) you would have a new "ecosystem" growing. This would lower the pain for the consumers of said data. You'd still have to implement it in every programming language that wants to access the data, but this is another problem.