ZIP files are not a database: they are more like a directory hierarchy. But maybe all I need is named blobs: no query language parser, optimizer, indexing, etc.

SQLite positions itself as an improvement over ZIP for application file formats: https://www.sqlite.org/appfileformat.html . But minzip is so much smaller, easier to understand, debug and ship. So why use SQLite for an app if ZIP suffices?

If you’re talking about like cbr archives, you’re right. It’s comparing against usages like word/excel, which store a bunch of XML in an archive and call it a day.

If you’re not reading and writing out application state, then yes, you don’t need something to manage your non-existent state