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SQLite seems like an odd dependency for a system which ultimately just journals events like "on 2026-02-24T19:36Z, entry 791 was created with username larry7 and password letmin" or "on 2026-02-24T20:51Z, the password for entry 791 became letmein2".

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This is a reductionist take on what password managers actually need to do. A journal log is actually worse than the XML in this regard in that the number of events far exceeds the actual relevant relations. Also, adding an attachment/icon his no longer possible. Simple group associations and tags also become a complex nightmare in a log based system, whereas in SQLite they are super easy relationships. Relating passkeys, totp strings, icons, extensive history, etc all to one entry becomes too much of a task for that kind of format to handle.

It's actually very simple to read a journal to determine the full current state of the database. It's potentially even faster than parsing XML, yielding exactly the same in-memory structure. Your computer will do it faster than you can cancel the operation. This also gives you history for free, rather than as nested entries (though you might have to write a log flattener to prune old journal entries). The operations required to parse log entries like "icon 4 is now this data" and "entry 791 now uses icon 4" are minuscule. There is no complexity, no nightmare, no loss of relations.

I am not advocating for KeePass switching to a journal, however, because the current ecosystem is fine.

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