On Nov 17, 2009, at 10:26 PM, Nikunj R. Mehta wrote:
On Nov 17, 2009, at 10:17 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
On Nov 17, 2009, at 9:34 PM, Nikunj R. Mehta wrote:
Hi guys,
I've been thinking about the WebDatabase specification [1] and
I've come to two conclusions. (1) We are miles away from
consensus on this specification, and, hence, we should _not_
consider putting it out for last call. (2) While good work has
gone into the IDL/JavaScript Call Level Interface (CLI), we have
made no progress on its SQL language specification and are not
likely to in the future. Thus we should publish the CLI as a WG
Note titled "WebSQLDatabase CLI" and curtail active work on this
specification in the working group. This is Oracle's official
position on this matter.
I disagree.
I don't understand your reasons.
I already sated some reasons in the previous thread about 'parking'
the spec. I did not want to belabor the point, since it's clear we
don't have consensus within the Working Group on the right way to go.
Publishing a WG Note would be appropriate if we had WG consensus to
stop work.
Understood
I don't think we have consensus to do that.
This is what I am trying to bring about. See the reasoning in my
original email. It would help if you can respond to the three points
why I think we have reached the end of the road.
I think that the three possibilities you listed are:
- Not an exhaustive enumeration of the possibilities. (I realize that
at this point, to convincingly show that a good SQL dialect spec is
possible will require actually doing it; I'm not sure how or when that
will happen but I am looking into it.)
- Not sufficient reason to stop work, given that we have multiple
willing implementors and so far no problems in practice.
Furthermore, stopping work would do practical harm:
- A WG Note would stop work without producing a test suite, thus
harming interoperability.
- A WG Note would leave us with no clear process to fix problems found
in the spec in the course of implementation.
- A WG Note is harder to "resurrect" in case of new info than a
stalled Working Draft; it would require essentially a new FPWD.
- It's likely that Web Database implementors will at some point want
to add features, and a WG Note does not provide a suitable path for
doing that.
And on the flip side, keeping the spec at Working Draft maturity will
not harm anyone who is not interested in it.
In brief, I do not find your arguments persuasive. I think there are
reasons to continue working. I don't expect my reasons to be
persuasive to everyone; clearly something will have to change for the
Working Group to have consensus on the best path forward.
Regards,
Maciej
