> Well, you still need to track down the <filename> part and knowing what you want to search, so you need to examine the schema anyway.
Yes agreed, but it's usually a lot easier to find the filename part, especially if the application follows XDG. Sqlite databases are usually buried somewhere because they aren't expected to be looked at.
However, if your all application state can be represented in a single json file of less than a dozen MB, yes, a database can be overkill.