Re: Points of order on this WG

On Jun 26, 2009, at 10:26 AM, Nikunj R. Mehta wrote:

>
>>
>> As a side note, it should be noted Berkeley DB itself could not be  
>> used by WebKit or Gecko to implement the spec, because even though  
>> it is open source, the license is not compatible with the LGPL. It  
>> seems unlikely that non-open-source browser engines could use it  
>> either, unless they are willing to pay Oracle for a commercial  
>> license. So it's very important for the spec to be clear and  
>> detailed, because everyone will have to implement it from scratch.
>
> Huh? what? I hope you had read Oracle's BDB license document [3] and  
> open source FAQ [4]. IANAL, but I can get answers for your specific  
> concerns in the context of open source Berkeley DB. AFAICT, someone  
> like Mozilla would not face any trouble with the open source license  
> of Berkeley DB. YMMV.

I read the license. By my reading, it imposes requirements that go  
beyond WebKit's LGPL license or Gecko's BSD/GPL/LGPL tri-license: <http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/htdocs/oslicense.html 
 >. Specifically clause 3 of the license.


>
>>
>> It's also not clear to me if a BDB-level API is sufficient for  
>> developer needs. As I understand it, it's basically a giant  
>> dictionary with unstructured keys and values. So it's not providing  
>> much over LocalStorage, except for prefix matching and the ability  
>> to hold large amounts of records or records that are individually  
>> large. There's no way to efficiently query by one of several  
>> fields, as I understand it.
>
> I trust that you are relatively new to storing data with B-trees.  
> They are at the heart of Oracle's indices so efficiency is out of  
> question. If you are wondering how can people store complex data  
> items with multiple fields and repeating values, look at Berkeley DB  
> Java Edition, which supports the EJB 3 persistence model [5]. FYI,  
> there is no significant difference between the APIs of BDB Java  
> Edition and the original BDB. They also have identical licensing  
> requirements.

Your references do not appear to explain on a technical level how one  
stores data with multiple fields in a way that you can query  
efficiently by more than one of them. I would appreciate a brief  
explanation.

Regards,
Maciej

P.S. I would appreciate if you could discuss technical matters without  
mock incredulity or condescension.

Received on Friday, 26 June 2009 20:13:48 UTC