However, from what I've seen - even while you do a transaction, SQLite seems to write a "journal" file (which is still I/O and still slow).
I'm also not saying mySQL should be used for app file format (that would be pretty dumb), but rather challenging the original article's premise that SQLite (as mp3) is one-fits-all solution. There are many solutions for many situations and SQLite is far from being universal solution.
I don't think anyone is saying that it is one size fits all. To extend the MP3 analogy, SQLite data is very portable, and serverless. MySQL is a server (in my experience), so you need to have that process always running, more analogous to a streaming audio server. I think that makes SQLite a very different kind of beast, more like a file format than a database server.
However, from what I've seen - even while you do a transaction, SQLite seems to write a "journal" file (which is still I/O and still slow).
I'm also not saying mySQL should be used for app file format (that would be pretty dumb), but rather challenging the original article's premise that SQLite (as mp3) is one-fits-all solution. There are many solutions for many situations and SQLite is far from being universal solution.