What are wdf and databins?

[dominikhezel]

I started/wanted to build a program that accesses and expands databases. I thought the new wdf framework sounds ideal. I created a dataset using ‘Dataset’ and tried to export it as database.wdf. However, Mathematica returns the error “Cannot infer format of file Database.wdf”. I’m puzzled by this. I checked the help menu, and found that there is something called ‘databin’. The general description sounds fine, however, the explanation in the helpmenu are unusually sparse and I do not really understand what this is. Could anyone enlighten me what wdf/databins are and how/when to use them best?