title: Metadata and multiple - interleaved, insertable - streams: which file format?
body: <p>Once I think about new software projects and current-age data uses, I cannot stand raw files anymore. they seem unnatural now.</p>
  
  <p>Basically a file should contain one or more data "streams", metadata/attributes, etc.</p>
  
  <p>The file should be optimized for sequential, parallel read (like mkv I think) but have reasonable performance for direct ("random") read access, possiby write access, and direct insertions.</p>
  
  <p>Maybe even explicit logical data structure (inside each stream) might be useful.</p>
  
  <p>mkv seems a pretty generic container format, but it seems to not completely fit the need and iirc has some multimedia-specific features in the container format itself</p>
  
  <p>I see sqlite suggested as an alternative, but has an all-file locking mechanism and I just don't know how stream data gets organized (if it stays multimedia-friendly enough or if it's more single-access optimized)</p>
  
  <p>Do you have any hint for me? Are there any other open, cross-platform, generic container, generic-access optimized, insertable data formats? What could I study?</p>