I also think that KISS principle is best. So, as noted before, this module doesn't try to export complex relations in database. User have to create queries to export just part of database in which he or she is interested (good example included in distribution is WebGUI script which exports just templates). It's very much like vim script that you refer to (which is very useful if you just want to edit data using vim, ++ for that).
But, having part of database as filesystem allows you to use all filesystem utilities like grep, cp (rm and mv are not supported at the moment) as well as different editors, ftp or http servers and so on. You can even create tar of your data before you start to edit it, just as backup.