Re: Replacing WebSQL with a Relational Data Model.

Hi Keeane, Jeremy, All,

Thanks for starting this thread Keean.

I agree with Jeremy that a API on top of IndexedDB, WebSQLDB, etc. would 
be interesting (e.g. performance data).

It's also not clear to me (ATM) that such an API should necessarily be 
put on WebApps' "standards" track. As always, the "devil's in the 
details". I think we also need to be careful about not including too 
many features in the first version of our specs.

-Art Barstow

On Oct/26/2010 6:45 AM, ext Jeremy Orlow wrote:
> Great!  This is exactly the type of thing we were hoping to see happen 
> on top of IndexedDB.  :-)
>
> For the record, I don't think the performance comparisons will be 
> super useful until browser vendors have time to work on basic 
> performance optimizations of their engines and until some effort is 
> put into query optimization in the library (or at least giving authors 
> a way to give hints on how to optimize it), but as time goes on, 
> such comparisons should be quite useful.
>
> As for the standards/support side of your question: such a library 
> would actually be much more like a library (like JQuery) rather than a 
> standard or anything that needs support from browser vendors. 
>  Standards will come into play if we pull bits of your API into the 
> standards, much like how CSS selectors were quite popular in libraries 
> and eventually got pulled into the web platform itself.
>
> When we are ready to add joins and such to the API, we'll definitely 
> be looking at what implementations out there are popular.  And even 
> before that, any code using IndexedDB will be very helpful for testing 
> and optimizing browsers' IndexedDB backends.
>
> J
>
> On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Keean Schupke <keean@fry-it.com 
> <mailto:keean@fry-it.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     I am beginning to think that a basic implementation on top of
>     IndexedDB may be workable (no query optimiser). The advantage
>     would be that once the API becomes standardised, browser
>     implementers may choose to have an alternate backend using SQLite
>     or another RDBMS.
>
>     So what I would like to propose producing a JavaScript API for the
>     relational algebra. The API will be split into a frontend (query
>     tree construction) which is visible to the user, and a backend
>     that is invisible (either executing the query using IndexedDB, or
>     WebSQL). This would be interesting for several reasons, it would
>     allow direct performance comparisons between IndexedDB and an
>     RDBMS for relational queries, it would provide a framework for
>     implementing a query optimiser for IndexedDB, and would allow
>     testing the IndexedDB relational operators against a known
>     database engine. It would also provide two implementations for
>     standardising.
>
>     The aim would be to standardise the API, allowing any
>     implementation of the backend.
>
>
>     Would this be something that I could get support for?
>
>
>     Cheers,
>     Keean.
>