Gonna have to disagree with you here. Very few people know how to version, compare, let alone if there are multiple collaborators, Excel files. Is there even a decent way of doing that outside of Excel Online / Google Sheets?
Yes, that's horrible. But millions of people can autonomously resort to this, and they would be incapable of doing anything with a SQLite file.
Same with version control: you just add _v17_20230909_final to the name. Yes, it's horrible. Yes, it's buggy. But yes, it also runs the world.
Are you trying to suggest that either you can't do that with sqlite, or that people didn't require training to do this in Excel?
sofixa: version and comparison is not really supported in Excel
harperlee: agree that software support is not there, but in practice average user knows how to do it and is quite comfortable doing it in Excel
btreecat: sqlite also has filenames and you can learn how to use it
harperlee: agree on the filename, Excel files and sqlite files are externally, opaquely versionable in the same way. the point about people learning is moot though, average user already knows Excel because they were forced to in the past, but does not have the time to learn new things.
SQLite is also an auto contained file. There are similar tabular GUI tools that could let you interact with sqlite using a similar workflow. Users knowing that thing is not inherent, they had to be trained on it, and they can be retrained as they will be for other workflows and business tools.
Remember, you still need an external app (Excel) to open it's files, the files themselves are just data, exactly like sqlite. So you could just make an excel plugin to interface with SQLite.
SQLite is as version-able as an excel file, as in not very with standard tools.
Why are you pasting images into excel? Doesn't matter, sqlite handles that fine actually. https://www.sqlite.org/fasterthanfs.html
The main argument against sqlite is that you would need to build an interface or figure out how to train folks on existing tools. That's not a huge argument against it in my experience, it's a strong social/political one in many orgs but rarely a technical issue.
The design of a solution needs to look into way more requirements than just the technical ones, time and money being 2 big ones. I think most of the HN readers would agree that you could end up building an interface with most of the Excel functionality, even more perhaps, on top of sqlite, and have your particular group of users trained on it.
With the original solution, you have an autocontained file that virtually any user knows how to edit, structure, expand, version, email, compare, discuss...
The level of user knowledge that you need for a similar solution based on a standalone SQLite file that you can version is another different world, e.g. to relate two values you would need to perhaps create a view or a trigger. And even with the most knowledgeable user you would still lack functionality such as simply pasting an image as a means of documentation and be able to see it, or WYSIWYG colors.