Firefox uses SQLite for tons of things internally, like history and bookmarks. S...

j-pb · on June 10, 2016

I don't see how the second link you provided shines any bad light on sqlite. It calls it the easiest to use of the 3. To me the irc conversations he cites make it very clear that mozilla was Simply bashing SQL at the peak of the NoSQL bubble.

I also see the lack of alternative implementations as a plus. SQLite is as portable as C essentially. So it's the only Web standard that's not broken and different in subtle ways across browsers.

If you look through old mail and irc archives you'll also find that somebody actually offered to specify a websql sqlite independent of sqlite under the condition that mozilla will assure that they will implement it. Which didn't happen.

sp332 · on June 10, 2016

Yeah, the main thing was differences between versions (even point versions) of the underlying SQLite installation on any given device. The spec probably would have helped with that. Also I don't know why Mozilla got opposite feedback about whether web devs wanted SQL compared to everyone else, but that also seemed to be a big factor.

j-pb · on June 11, 2016

SQLite is probably one of the most backwards compatibility conscious projects I know. They even will continue to support version 3 and 4 in parallel.

I don't think compatibility between browsers is very prominent in the minds of browser vendors tbh, considering how many browsers fail to implement specifications correctly.

I think it's pretty clear why people opposed SQL. All this happened in the midst of the NoSQL hype. Where everybody was bashing SQL in favour of key Value stores and document databases (which turned out to have far more constraints than people assumed) (I made the same mistake back then). And especially Web developers have a tendency to go for the newest shiniest of trends (bazillion Web frameworks anyone).

I try to see a silver lining in this though. With the spec deprecated, and sqlite 3 being long term supported, WebSQL is probably the most compatible, complete and stable of any of the HTML5 specs. And as long as the browsers I care about support it (safari, chrome and Opera) not having the spec change with every trend and and hype is not a liabilit but an asset.