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"client" doesn't mean web. Mobile apps, desktop apps, etc are all client-side apps that can run regular SQLite.

Think of apps Spotify, WhatsApp, AirBnB, Uber, etc. Not to mention mail clients, web browsers, etc. Probably 90% of non-web clients are using SQLite.



I'm not sure about this, I may be exaggerating, but aren't all four apps you mentioned (Spotify, WhatsApp, AirBnB, Uber) built on Electron? So they'd be using SQLite in the Node portion as their storage. That's their "server side", not client side.

For that portion (the locally-run mobile backend - the middleware) I guess it would make more sense... so I see what you're saying.

[Edit: Of all 4 things - Maybe only Spotify is actually an Electron app...? Although I'm confused as to how the rest could leverage NodeJS locally]


Servers are things on other sides of networks. An electron app running locally is all client, whether it contains a database or not.


I would consider the entirety of one of those Electron apps to be a client since their main purpose is to interface with an external server—even if a small part of them internally is itself a server.


Spotify used Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) not Electron, but it’s similar in that it bundles Chrome and uses webviews to draw UI




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