Nice article by Alex Willmer on potential successors to the shapefile and why we need one.    He’s right about the File Geodatabase.  It would be a good option if the format were published.  But SpatiaLite seems in its infancy, at this point, and the Personal Geodatabase wouldn’t work on non-Windows systems, even if it were published.  We’ve labored under the limitations of the shapefile for some years.  It’s time for something new.