Why isn’t there a decent file format for tabular data?
Seems like the problem here is there is several high quality and well-developed formats, but the author and the commenters here dismiss them because of the different trade-offs they make.<p>csv -- Simple for simple use cases, text-based, however many edge cases, feature lacking etc<p>xlsx -- Works in excel, ubiquitous format with a standard, however complicated and missing scientific features<p>sqlite -- Designed for relational data, somewhat ubiquitous, types defined but not enforced<p>parquet &#x2F; hdf5 &#x2F; apache feather &#x2F; etc -- Designed for scientific use cases, robust, efficient, less ubiquitous<p>capn proto, prototype buffers, avro, thrift -- Has specific features for data communication between systems<p>xml -- Useful if you are programming in early 2000s<p>GDBM, Kyoto Cabinet, etc -- Useful if you are programming in late 1990s<p>Pick your poison I guess. Engineering is about trade offs.