[whatwg] Why SQL? was: Comments on updated SQL API

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Sep 24, 2007, at 11:45 PM, Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:

> Ian Hickson wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
>>
>>> I have a question: why SQL was chosen as client side storage for  
>>> Web Applications?
>>>
>>
>> Because it's what most app developers are already used to -- the M  
>> in the widely used traditional LAMP stack is SQL.
>>
>>
> "most app developers are already used to" ... do what?
> Storing text and other variable length data in flat tables?
> Where did you find such developers?

Web App developers are used to using SQL to access storage on the  
server. Web apps that add offline support are likely to want to store  
data on the client with a similar structure to data on the server. If  
some form of object persistence is desired, it could be implemented on  
top of SQL, and perhaps once it is proven as a storage model some  
built-in approach could be standardized.

> I suspect that initial simple *Berkeley DB*
> alike proposal is what really needed and enough in
> most cases.

Berkeley DB is just an on-disk hashtable. Such simple key/value story  
with no support for complex queries can already be found in the  
Storage API. <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-storage 
 >. Low-structure storage can indeed be good for simple cases.

(Actually, the Berkeley DB API has a lot more to it than that, but  
exposing something resembling the full API would require a large  
amount of API surface area.)

Regards,
Maciej