Re: Two years on and still no sensible web storage solutions exist

My recollection is that some vendors refused to ever support SQLite, making
a SQL-based standard not really feasible. You can undoubtedly review the
w3c archives to find out more details if you want to know the rationale
they expressed at the time.

It's unfortunate that IndexedDB is still not widely supported by browsers -
I share your frustration. However, as you say, you can write to the
IndexedDB APIs, and use a shim to get support on platforms that do not
support it yet.

-atw


On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Florian Bösch <pyalot@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to propose as a constructive strategy not to flame/offend
> everybody right off the bat. I'm sure there's reasons, I'd like to hear
> them, too.
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 7:24 PM, Todd Blanchard <toddvblanchard@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> It has been two years since the following little note was attached to the
>> Web SQL Spec
>>
>> This document was on the W3C Recommendation track but specification work
>> has stopped. The specification reached an impasse: all interested
>> implementors have used the same SQL backend (Sqlite), but we need multiple
>> independent implementations to proceed along a standardisation path.
>>
>> This move has left the web browser world in disarray and has been widely
>> misconstrued by readers to mean "Web SQL is deprecated and will not be
>> supported in the future - better port to IndexedDB".
>>
>> Today, TWO YEARS LATER, we have SQLite on iOS, Android, Chrome, and
>> Safari but no IndexedDB.  On Firefox we have IndexedDB with SQLite
>> available only via a browser extension
>> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/html5-websql-for-firefox/ (annoying
>> but liveable), and on IE[89] only DOM storage with IndexedDB expected on IE
>> 10.
>>
>> Sources: http://caniuse.com/indexeddb http://caniuse.com/sql-storage
>>
>> As someone who is trying to build an offline web app the works both on
>> browsers and smart phones and needs to store a lot of client side complex
>> data that will require lots of joins - let me just say WTF?
>>
>> Why do we have standards again?  You're not helping.
>>
>> I look around at information on the state of storage options and I read
>> stuff like this:
>> "Since November 18, 2010, the W3C announced that Web SQL database is a
>> deprecated specification. This is a recommendation for web developers to no
>> longer use the technology as effectively, the spec will receive no new
>> updates and browser vendors aren't encouraged to support this technology.
>> The new alternative is IndexedDB which is already available on Chrome 12+
>> and Firefox 5+, and, soon, in IE 10 as well.
>> "
>> Was it really the intent to abandon SQL as a concept because everybody is
>> using the same well tested and portable library?  Are we doomed to never
>> ever having a stable and consistent platform to work on?Because there are
>> no competing implementations for browser accessible SQL database access -
>> everybody settled on one nice bit of code to fulfill this requirement - the
>> specification is dropped and the browser developers drop even trying to
>> implement SQL database access and there is even talk of removing it?
>>
>> WTF is wrong with you people?
>>
>> IndexedDB is fine - add it.  But don't for a second try to tell me it is
>> anywhere near as powerful as having a real SQL database on hand.
>>
>> Also, the hand waving about how it should be possible to add SQL on top
>> of IndexedDB rings hollow.  If it were easy we would have it.  OTOH, going
>> the other way seems pretty easy.
>> https://github.com/axemclion/IndexedDBShim maybe the developers should
>> just pursue this approach with SQLite and call it a day.
>>
>> Absolutely disgusted.
>>
>> -Todd Blanchard
>>
>
>