It looks like an unintended omission to me. I would say "If the *expected* database version is an empty string", which is ambiguous as well, but it is about the "expected version" of course.
I think that if someone opens a database without expecting a particular version and the database already exists the openDatabase() call should succeed. Best regards, Chris -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brady Eidson Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 7:37 AM To: WHATWG Mailing List Subject: [whatwg] SQL API and database versioning openDatabase() is called with a database name and an expected version string. If the database has a version, and it is different than the expected version, openDatabase() fails. This makes sense. But... "Otherwise, if the database version is the empty string, or if the database doesn't yet exist, or if the database exists and the version provided to the openDatabase() method is the same as the current version associated with the database, then the method must return a Database object..." 1 of these 3 situations doesn't make sense. A database without a version should not be considered valid if the caller to openDatabase() expects a version. This seems silly as two callers, one expecting "versionFoo" of a database and the other expecting "versionBar" will both be allowed access to a versionless database. That seems like an instant recipe for failure for at least versionFoo or versionBar, possibly both. I think that if someone opens a database with an expected version and the database already exists but has an empty version string, the openDatabase() call should fail. ~Brady