Out of curiosity, which package did you select when you first installed OH? I wouldn’t expect any persistence to be installed or configured for Expert, Minimial, or Standard. But for Simple or Demo I would have expected one of them to be installed and configured.
The big challenge is that the embedded Persistence options have significant limitations (MapDB can only store the most recent value, rrd4j can only store Number values) which makes them unsuitable as a default. All the rest require the installation and configuration of some other program that runs outside of OH.
That is one of the big problems in this space. Home automation in general is far more difficult than almost any newbie expects. It’s not just OH, though there are clearly many areas where OH needs to improve on the usability front. But there is only so much that can be done.
A known gap in OH. It’s a harder problem than a lot of users realize. But it is know and I believe there is some work underway to address it. For now the best suggestion is to use the CalDav binding for dynamic scheduling. For scheduling based on the sun use the Astro binding and Rules. For static scheduling (i.e. hard coded shcedules) use Rules with Time cron triggers.
The philosophy is that Rules are supposed to handle scenes, and there are several approaches. When the Experimental Next Gen Rules Engine matures it will provide even easier ways to set up scenes through Rules. See A simple scene management: finally a good use of scripts for a good approach to scenes.
These things are being worked. And one thing newbies do not have insight into is how far OH has come in a relatively short period of time. Man years of effort has been spent to get OH to this point and man years more of effort will be required to get OH where it is going. The usability improvements already made to OH from when I started using it in 1.6 to now are breathtaking.