On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Joran Greef <[email protected]> wrote: > IndexedDB supports binary values as per the structured clone algorithm > as implemented in Chrome and Firefox. > > IndexedDB needs to support binary keys (ArrayBuffer, TypedArrays). > > Many popular KV stores accept binary keys (BDB, Tokyo, LevelDB). The > Chrome implementation of IDB is already serializing keys to binary. > > JS is moving more and more towards binary data across the board > (WebSockets, TypedArrays, FileSystemAPI). IDB is not quite there if it > does not support binary keys. > > Binary keys are more efficient than Base 64 encoded keys, e.g. a 128 > bit key in base 256 is 16 bytes, but 22 bytes in base 64. > > Am working on a production system storing 3 million keys in IndexedDB. > In about 6 months it will be storing 60 million keys in IndexedDB. > > Without support for binary keys, that's 330mb wasted storage > (60,000,000 * (22 - 16)) not to mention the wasted CPU overhead spent > Base64 encoding and decoding keys.
I agree that we should introduce this, but I think it's too late to add for version one (which is about to go to last call any day now). I'd be happy to add it to version 2 though. However the current situation regarding binary data in Javascript is still pretty chaotic. See for example the resent change to switch a bunch of APIs over from ArrayBuffer to ArrayBufferViews. / Jonas
