Short: WebSQL enables more powerful web applications. It allows some online features to be used offline.
It's not about SQL it's about a proper relational database with tables, indexes, ACID, etc.
You may remember Google Gears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Gears ), even back in 2007 one could use the Google Mail (GMail) web interface during a flight, train ride, etc. to read mails, write mails, edit drafts, etc. As soon as the connection had reestablished the data synced between client and server. Later Google rewrote it to HTML5.
There was a trend to move everything to the "cloud". But with the arise of peer-to-peer web applications (WebRTC, etc) and thanks to the bad NSA news we need good client side cache and data storage APIs.
I haven't seen a SQL library as shim on top of IndexedDB. It would be pervert anyway as IndexedDB is implemented on top of SQLite in Firefox.
I would like to ask Mozilla to finally implement WebSQL. With a relational database, more powerful web applications with optional offline support would be possible.
I would immediately support this. This conversation needs to be started again. I'm gonna ping some people on twitter.
I've just searched for a WebSQL on IndexedDB adapter yesterday and it's certainly possible, but it's a nightmare from the perspective of any sane person. This polyfill I found runs SQLite compiled with CLANG to javascript, which means running 2MB of javascript to support something that they already support 'under the hood'. I refuse to work with that.
Great. We would need a blog post that lands on the HN front page and some other HN readers that are equal minded. Or a contact to Mozilla devs.
There is also a similar one called SQL.js - SQLite compiled to JavaScript through Emscripten (probably a big library too): https://github.com/kripken/sql.js
It's not about SQL it's about a proper relational database with tables, indexes, ACID, etc.
You may remember Google Gears (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Gears ), even back in 2007 one could use the Google Mail (GMail) web interface during a flight, train ride, etc. to read mails, write mails, edit drafts, etc. As soon as the connection had reestablished the data synced between client and server. Later Google rewrote it to HTML5.
There was a trend to move everything to the "cloud". But with the arise of peer-to-peer web applications (WebRTC, etc) and thanks to the bad NSA news we need good client side cache and data storage APIs.
I haven't seen a SQL library as shim on top of IndexedDB. It would be pervert anyway as IndexedDB is implemented on top of SQLite in Firefox.
I would like to ask Mozilla to finally implement WebSQL. With a relational database, more powerful web applications with optional offline support would be possible.