Web Storage Scope and Charter (was: CfC: FPWD of Server-Sent Events, Web Sockets API, Web Storage, and Web Workers; deadline April 10)

Hi, Folks-

I discussed this a bit with Nikunj offline, in the context of the 
charter wording.  He and I both agreed that the scope of the charter was 
too narrow (that was my fault; I changed the wording to reflect the 
abstract of the current Web Storage spec, and I probably shouldn't 
have), but we also agreed that the spec itself is higher profile and 
more important than the wording in the charter.

Jonas and others seem to support broadening the scope, and I've also 
been reading various posts in the blogosphere that also question whether 
SQL is the right choice (I see a lot of support for JSON-based 
approaches).  At the very least, I think this group should discuss this 
more before committing to any one solution.  I note that Ian was already 
open to an early spec revision on the same lines, so I hope this isn't 
controversial.

Rather than change the charter (which would require everyone who's 
already rejoined to re-rejoin at the simplest, and might require another 
AC review at the worst), Nikunj offered that he would be satisfied if 
more generic wording were put in the charter, and highlighted as an 
issue.  I would propose something like, "This specification currently 
contains wording specific to a SQL or name-value pair storage solution, 
but the WebApps WG is discussing other structured storage alternatives 
that may better match the use cases and requirements."  I leave it up to 
Nikunj to provide wording that would satisfy him.

If this is acceptable to the WG as a whole, I would ask that a message 
similar to the above be put in a prominent place in the spec.  This 
seems like the soundest way forward.

Art, Chaals, care to chime in?  Other comments on this matter?

Regards-
-Doug Schepers
W3C Team Contact, SVG and WebApps WGs


Jonas Sicking wrote (on 4/21/09 6:22 PM):
> Hmm.. I tend to agree. Using an SQL database is only one possible
> solution that we should be examining. I would rather say that we
> should provide storage for structured data inside the UA. I'm not a
> fan of calling out neither SQL or name-value pair storage.
>
> At the same time I'm not sure that I care that much about it, as long
> as we can change the draft later in case the spec takes a different
> turn than the current drafts.
>
> / Jonas
>
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Nikunj Mehta<nikunj.mehta@oracle.com>  wrote:
>>  Apparently the new charter [1] that forces everyone to re-join the WG also
>>  lists among its deliverables as WebStorage with the explanation that
>>  WebStorage is
>>
>>  "two APIs for client-side data storage in Web applications: a name-value
>>  pair system, and a database system with a SQL frontend"
>>
>>  Clearly, if the WD of WebStorage has in its abstract something more general,
>>  the charter should not be so specific.
>>
>>  I now understand that this new piece of text made its way into the charter
>>  recently. The last message I can see about charter change for WebApps [1]
>>  only talks about adding WebWorkers. Apparently other changes were also made,
>>  but no diff provided to members about the charter change proposal.
>>
>>  Can you throw some light on this?
>>
>>  Nikunj
>>
>>  [1] http://www.w3.org/2009/04/webapps-charter
>>  [2] http://www.w3.org/mid/3E428EC7-1960-4ECE-B403-827BA47FE1EB@nokia.comIan
>>  Hickson wrote:
>>
>>  On Fri, 10 Apr 2009, Nikunj Mehta wrote:
>>
>>
>>  Here's what Oracle would like to see in the abstract:
>>
>>  This specification defines two APIs for persistent data storage in Web
>>  clients: one for accessing key-value pair data and another for accessing
>>  structured data.
>>
>>
>>  Done.

Received on Thursday, 23 April 2009 20:04:50 UTC