The other day I posted about being able to examine the Lightroom database using the open source SQLite Database Browser. Well, according to Fazal Majid, Aperture uses the same underlying database….

Find the Aperture library, right click it and select “Show package contents”. The application data seems to be a folder structure with a large number of files, most of which are actually xml. There's also a file called “Library.apdb”, and this is the Aperture database.

Two thoughts:

1) So both Lightroom and Aperture databases are open and accessible via ODBC. Now, while I don't like the look of data blobs, but what's to stop someone figuring out how to pass settings between the two?

2) How long should we make do with cataloguing databases whose underlying databases are closed?