Re: Web Storage Scope and Charter

Hi, Ian-

Ian Hickson wrote (on 4/23/09 4:18 PM):
> On Thu, 23 Apr 2009, Doug Schepers wrote:
>>
>>  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.
>
> If there is something that is more useful for Web authors as a whole than
> SQL, and if the browser vendors are willing to implement it, then the spec
> should use that, yes.
>
> (I don't know of anything that fits that criteria though. Most of the
> proposals so far have been things that are useful in specific scenarios,
> but aren't really generic solutions.)

This seems to lead into a discussion of use cases and requirements.  You 
don't include those in your draft... Do you have a UCR document that we 
could put on the wiki, like the one for Web Workers [1] (note that 
although I put that into the wiki, I pulled them from somewhere else, 
maybe the HTML wiki)?

So, some of the requirements you're listing here are:
* more useful for Web authors as a whole than SQL
* browser vendors are willing to implement it
* should have broad and scalable applicability

The first two are rather hard to quantify, and part of the process of 
writing a spec is to discover what these are.  The best solution is not 
necessarily the most obvious one from the start, and after deeper 
examination, browsers implementers may be willing to implement something 
that didn't appeal to them at the beginning. (Any spec is better than no 
spec, so the fact that they may be willing to implement whatever the 
current spec says doesn't mean it's the best solution.)

What are the other criteria you have in mind?

Which other solutions have you looked at that don't meet these criteria?


>>  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.
>
> The draft got published today, so it's too late to change the high-profile
> version of the spec.

It's not too late at all.  This group can publish as frequently as it 
wants, and we could have another WD up next week, with such a message in 
it.  That would have an equally high profile.

The overhead of this seems much less than that of changing the charter.


> Rather than add this message, I'd like to just come
> to some sort of conclusion on the issue. What are the various proposals
> that exist to solve this problem other than SQL, and how willing are the
> browser vendors to implement those solutions?

We can do both: publish an updated version of the spec that says we're 
looking at various solutions, and examine the solutions that come in (as 
a result of broad review that opens that door).

If we are able to come to an immediate conclusion, I'm all in favor of 
that.  But Nikunj, at least, doesn't seem to think we are there yet, so 
I think it's worth reopening the larger issue.


[1] http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/Web_Workers

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

Received on Thursday, 23 April 2009 21:13:43 UTC