The “Death” of Web SQL Databases?

November 22, 2010 at 10:31 pm in HTML5, Mobile, Offline, Web SQL

Recently, the W3C’s working group announced that it will no longer advance the specification for Web SQL Databases. Mozilla has taken the stance that they won’t implement the specification mainly because they don’t like the fact that it relies on SQLite’s implementation of SQL. So does this mean that Web SQL Databases are dead?

Hardly. All of the WebKit-based browsers have implemented this technology, and no current browsers implement the proposed IndexedDB solution which the W3C is now focusing on. Mozilla won’t ever implement Web SQL Databases, it’s unlikely that Opera and Microsoft ever will either, but considering that all iPhones, iPods, iPads, and Android devices currently do support this specification, it’s not going away any time soon.

Building an offline application for the iPad? Web SQL Storage is pretty nice stuff, especially when you combine it with HTML5’s offline browsing capabilities. In the book, we focus on that very example.

It’s far from dead. In fact it’s quite stable. The specification even provides transactions, so it’s good enough. Far better than some of the other specifications that many browser makers actually “agree” on.

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