[whatwg] Cross-domain databases; was: "File package protocol and manifest support?"

[Michael Nordman]

> For what it's worth, this was my immediate thought as well upon
> reading the idea. The database is insufficiently fast on some
> platforms to server as an IPC mechanism and there are practical
> limitations with having too many contending transactions so my
> instinct would be to build large integrated web apps with a shared
> worker routing data between components.

I buy this thinking too as a better strategy for integrating web apps.

But still, the ability to download a fully formed SQL database, and
then run SQL against it would be nice.

openDatabaseFromURL(urlToDatabaseFile);

* downloads the database file if needed (per http cache control headers)
* the database can reside in an appcache (in which case it would be
subject to appcache'ing rules instead)
* returns a read-only database object

Of course, there is the issue of the SQL database format.