In reply to Otto.

Thanks for your reply Otto. However, and I create my blocks with ACF Pro, that is not possible. I directly asked the ACF developers, and the answer I got from them was that at least with ACF Pro, ACF custom fields and ACF Blocks cannot "communicate". I hope this will change in the future...

That said, I still believe, as far as keeping the database as small as possible, Gutenberg blocks is the way to go, and as far as using WP as an app. (real estate sites, etc...), I would create block/s for most of the information I want to collect, and create custom fields in meta boxes for the fields I would need for parametric search queries, thus minimizing the database damage as much as possible.

However, and nobody has commented on this yet, using Gutenberg blocks, we completely lose the option of front end post submissions/editing.

It started about 10 years ago, when WP really took off and really left the competition miles behind, because by then, WP could be used as a serious professional CMS, and even as apps. thanks to custom fields and the introduction of pages, not just blogs. Unfortunately it has never jumped over the hurdle of really handling large websites at least without spending thousands on hosting to handle the data. As it is now, there is no way (at least at with reasonable hosting fees) sites like Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc... can use WP to sell their tens of thousands of products. Magento can, but not WP. And I think if WP really wants to be the Internet's OS, the front end posting and the parametric search issues must be addressed. Looking at some of the developer's websites, and templates, unfortunately the emphasis is still on blogging - I think, the emphasis should be beyond blogging...