Re: [IndexedDB] Design Flaws: Not Stateless, Not Treating Objects As Opaque

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Keean Schupke <keean@fry-it.com> wrote:

> On 31 March 2011 18:17, Jeremy Orlow <jorlow@chromium.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Keean Schupke <keean@fry-it.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 31 March 2011 17:41, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 1:32 AM, Joran Greef <joran@ronomon.com> wrote:
>>>> > On 31 Mar 2011, at 9:53 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> I previously have asked for a detailed proposal, but so far you have
>>>> >> not supplied one but instead keep referring to other unnamed database
>>>> >> APIs.
>>>> >
>>>> > I have already provided an adequate interface proposal for putObject
>>>> and deleteObject.
>>>>
>>>> That is hardly a comprehensive proposal, but rather just one small part
>>>> of it.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I wanted to make a few comments about these points :-
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I do really think the idea of not having the implementation keep track
>>>> of the set of indexes for a objectStore is a really interesting one.
>>>> As is the idea of not even having a set set of objectStores. However,
>>>> there are several problems that needs to be solved. In particular how
>>>> do you deal with collations?
>>>>
>>>
>>> no indexes, no object stores... well I for one prefer the
>>> "validate_object_store", "validate_index" approach, in that it can hide
>>> statefullness if necessary (like I do with RelationalDB) whilst presenting a
>>> stateless API. It also keeps the size of the put statements down.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I.e. we have concluded that there are important use cases which
>>>> require using different collations for different indexes and
>>>> objectStores. Even for different indexes attached to the same
>>>> objectStore.
>>>>
>>>> Additionally, if we're getting rid of setVersion, how do we expect
>>>> pages dealing with the (application managed) schema changing while the
>>>> page has a connection open to the database?
>>>>
>>>
>>> 1 - there is no schema
>>> 2 - dont allow it to change whilst the database is open
>>>
>>> In reality a schema is implicitly tied to a code version. In other words
>>> the source code of the application assumes a certain schema. If the assumed
>>> schema and the schema in the DB do not match things are going to go very
>>> wrong very quickly. Schema changes _always_ accompany code changes
>>> (otherwise they are not schema changes just data changes). As such they
>>> never happen when a DB is open. The way I handle this in RelationalDB, by
>>> validating the actual schema against the source-code schema in the db-open
>>> (actually the method is called validate), is probably the best way to handle
>>> this. If the database does not exist we create it according to the schema.
>>> If it exists we check it matches the schema. If there is a difference we see
>>> if we can 'upgrade' the database automatically (certain changes like adding
>>> a new column with a default value can be done automaticall), if we cannot
>>> automaticall upgrade, we exit with an error - as allowing the program to run
>>> will result in corruption of the data already in the database. At this point
>>> it is up to the application to figure out how to upgrade the database (by
>>> opening one database with an old schema and another with a new schema)...
>>> There is not point in ever allowing a database to be opened with the wrong
>>> schema.
>>>
>>>
>>>> So pretty please, with sugar on top, please come up with a proposal
>>>> for the full API rather than bits and pieces.
>>>>
>>>> And I should mention that I have as an absolute requirement that you
>>>> should be able to specify collation by simply saying that you want to
>>>> use "en-US" or "sv-SV" sorting. Using callbacks or other means is ok
>>>> *in addition to this*, but callback mechanisms tend to be a lot more
>>>> complex since they have to deal with the callback doing all sorts of
>>>> evil things such as returning inconsistent results (think "return
>>>> Math.random()"), or simply do evil things like navigate the current
>>>> page, deleting the database, or modifying the record that is in the
>>>> process of being stored.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The core API only needs to deal with sorting binary-blob sort orders. A
>>> library wrapper could provide all the collation ordering goodness that
>>> people want. For example RelationalDB will have to deal with sorting orders,
>>> it does not need the browser to provide that functionality. In fact browser
>>> provided functionality may limit what can be done in libraries on top.
>>>
>>
>> This is difficult if not impossible to do.  See previous threads on the
>> matter.
>>
>> J
>>
>
> I can find a lot of stuff on collation, but not a lot about why it could
> not be done in a library. Could you summerise the reasons why this needs to
> be core functionality for me?
>

Sorry, but that stuff is paged out of my brain.  Pablo, can you?


> A library could chose to use an object store as meta-data to store the
> collation orders that it is using for various indexes for example.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Keean.
>
>