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The YXDB file format is designed for some very specific needs around high speed reading and writing as well as having random I/O (for browsing) and a spatial index (for mapping/spatial join, etc...) This makes it not suited to more database like operations like append or query. When looking for a desktop file format that has database like functionality, SQLITE is the way to go. It is well supported in Alteryx, allows you to append/query etc. And then if you want indexes and stuff, you can build them with a separate tool and Alteryx will be able to use them.
Ned- Thanks for your response and I understand where you are coming from. One difficulty we face (and one that I bet is quite common) is that any setting up of additional software requires IT / admin rights for installation, maintenance, etc. I can't even download SQLite to try it out without IT's involvement. Hence, being able to append to the native Alteryx database would save us a fair amount of startup time.
That said, we will look into SQLite as a way of appending, as this is a function we need. Our files are too large to continue appending as CSV, XLSX, but our organization isn't really big enough to maintain a true enterprise data warehouse.
Ned - correct me if I'm wrong, but I see about a 3x increase in file size if I go from YXDB to SQLLITE. Does that seem right? My input is simply a YXDB. No tools in between. Just a YXDB input and a SQLLITE output. But the file size goes from about 50MB to 150MB.