Re: Starting work on Indexed DB v2 spec - feedback wanted

On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Tim Caswell <tim@creationix.com> wrote:

> Personally, the main thing I want to see is expose simpler and lower level
> APIs.  For my uses (backend to git server), the leveldb API is plenty
> powerful.  Most of the time I'm using IndexedDB, I'm getting frustrated
> because it's way more complex than I need and gets in the way and slows
> things down.
>
> Would it make sense to standardize on a simpler set of APIs similar to
> what levelDB offers and expose that in addition to what indexedDB currently
> exposes?  Or would this make sense as a new API apart from IDB?
>

That sounds like a separate storage system to me, although you could
imagine it shares some primitives with Indexed DB (e.g. keys/ordering).

How much of leveldb's API you consider part of the minimum set - write
batches? iterators? snapshots? custom comparators? multiple instances per
application? And are IDB-style keys / serialized script values appropriate,
or is that extra overhead over e.g. just strings?

You may want to try prototyping this on top of Indexed DB as a library, and
see what others think. It'd basically just be hiding most of the IDB API
(versions, transactions, stores, indexes) behind functions that return
Promises.


> As a JS developer, I'd much rather see fast, simple, yet powerful
> primitives over application-level databases with indexes and transactions
> baked in.  Chrome implements IDB on top of LevelDB, so it has just enough
> primitives to make more complex systems.
>
> But for applications like mine that use immutable storage and hashes for
> all lookups don't need or want the advanced features added on top.  IDB is
> a serious performance bottleneck in my apps and when using LevelDB in
> node.js, my same logic runs a *lot* faster and using a lot less code.
>
> -Tim Caswell
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Joshua Bell <jsbell@google.com> wrote:
>
>> At the April 2014 WebApps WG F2F [1] there was general agreement that
>> moving forward with an Indexed Database "v2" spec was a good idea. Ali
>> Alabbas (Microsoft) has volunteered to co-edit the spec with me.
>> Maintaining compatibility is the highest priority; this will not break the
>> existing API.
>>
>> We've been tracking additional features for quite some time now, both on
>> the wiki [2] and bug tracker [3]. Several are very straightforward
>> (continuePrimaryKey, batch gets, binary keys, ...) and have already been
>> implemented in some user agents, and it will be helpful to document these.
>> Others proposals (URLs, Promises, full text search, ...) are much more
>> complex and will require additional implementation feedback; we plan to add
>> features to the v2 spec based on implementer acceptance.
>>
>> This is an informal call for feedback to implementers on what is missing
>> from v1:
>>
>> * What features and functionality do you see as important to include?
>> * How would you prioritize the features?
>>
>> If there's anything you think is missing from the wiki [2], or want to
>> comment on the importance of a particular feature, please call it out -
>> replying here is great. This will help implementers decide what work to
>> prioritize, which will drive the spec work. We'd also like to keep the v2
>> cycle shorter than the v1 cycle was, so timely feedback is appreciated -
>> there's always room for a "v3".
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2014/04/10-webapps-minutes.html
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/IndexedDatabaseFeatures
>> [3]
>> https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&component=Indexed%20Database%20API&list_id=34841&product=WebAppsWG&query_format=advanced&resolution=LATER
>>
>> PS: Big thanks to Zhiqiang Zhang for his Indexed DB implementation
>> report, also presented at the F2F.
>>
>
>