Hi guys,
I've been thinking about the WebDatabase specification [1] and I've
come to two conclusions. (1) We are miles away from consensus on this
specification, and, hence, we should _not_ consider putting it out for
last call. (2) While good work has gone into the IDL/JavaScript Call
Level Interface (CLI), we have made no progress on its SQL language
specification and are not likely to in the future. Thus we should
publish the CLI as a WG Note titled "WebSQLDatabase CLI" and curtail
active work on this specification in the working group. This is
Oracle's official position on this matter.
It's not that we aren't brilliant engineers, it's just that we've been
stuck with a conundrum without a suitable solution:
Standardizing on a SQL CLI without specifying the SQL accepted by the
CLI will lead to non-interoperable implementations jeopardizing the
goal of this working group - to have a consistent technique for
managing stored data in user agents.
Standardizing on a language with no readily available implementation
will delay adoption and place an unreasonable burden on user agent
vendors.
Standardizing on the SQL accepted by the CLI based on what is
implemented in a certain library (SQLite to be precise) will preclude
multiple independent implementations, which is unacceptable as a
public standard.
So my suggestion is that rather than wrapping this conundrum in an
enigma, we wrap it in a WG Note until we find ourselves in a new
situation and the answer either becomes apparent or irrelevant.
I may not be able to follow up on all the replies as I am on vacation
later this week. If so, I apologize in advance and will do my best to
reply immediately once I return.
Thanks,
Nikunj Mehta
http://o-micron.blogspot.com
[1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/webdatabase/
