Question

The local DB api based on SQLite is going down. According to w3c it has to be replaced indexedDB. But IndexedDB API is still work in progress so no implementation yet.
For an app that needs massive db storage… and for the time being; what is the alternative? What would be the most future proof?

Local storage is no option as I need to store data structured (relational), and a lot of it.
Cloud based alternatives are also out of scope. I need something local.

Answer 1

I would say indexeddb is the way to go. IE, FF and chrome allready support it, but for mobile devices it’s still a hell. I would advice you to stay with websql for now, I think phonegap will keep supporting it for a while.

The problem with the spec was, that there isn’t a standerd way to query. Every vendor used SQLite, but a spec can’t be build on one product, that would be very dangerous. Also in most cases different db vendors mean different SQL dialects. This is also in contradiction with a standard way of working. This would mean you would have to check which db you are working and then use a different dialect. That is why they decided to use a uniform API called indexeddb.

All browsers that use an database like SQL lite to store the data in only the interface to query is the indexeddb API, so in that way indexeddb is something like an odbc. Only it’s very simple and slim. If you want to learn more about indexeddb take a look at my blog I have several blogposts about it. This one is a good one to start with. It explains the basics of indexeddb.