Re: [WebSQL] Any future plans, or has IndexedDB replaced WebSQL?

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 00:42:40, Glenn Maynard wrote:

> You can certainly ask if they're interested in doing so, not for "our"
> benefit (whoever "our" means), but for the benefit of the Web as a whole,
> and there's nothing at all rude in asking.  I'd say the opposite: it's rude
> to assume they wouldn't be interested, rather than asking and letting them
> come to their own decision.  (I don't know where the notion of "forcing"
> them to do anything came from.)

I have been reading up more on the history of SQLite. It is a stellar implementation, just to highlight a few points:

1. "Most of the SQLite source code is devoted purely to testing and verification. An automated test suite runs millions and millions of test cases involving hundreds of millions of individual SQL statements and achieves 100% branch test coverage."

2. "SQLite can also be made to run in minimal stack space (4KiB) and very little heap (100KiB), making SQLite a popular database engine choice on memory constrained gadgets such as cellphones, PDAs, and MP3 players."

3. "Faster than popular client/server database engines for most common operations."

4. "Supports terabyte-sized databases and gigabyte-sized strings and blobs."

5. "The developers continue to expand the capabilities of SQLite and enhance its reliability and performance while maintaining backwards compatibility with the published interface spec, SQL syntax, and database file format."

It is easier to build a performant IndexedDB on SQLite than to build a performant SQLite on IndexedDB. Maybe that is something to think about. Developers need working database primitives, more than they need convenience.

There may be conjectural reasons for Mozilla not implementing WebSQL, but the track history of SQLite is hard to ignore. Mozilla is already embedding SQLite for other uses, and appears to be a sponsor of the project.

SQLite may not be a specification in "our" sense of the word, but in a Web sense of the word, it is so widely deployed already that it would be hard not to call it a standard.

Received on Saturday, 2 April 2011 08:38:38 UTC