On 5/21/12 8:03 PM, ext Jonas Sicking wrote:
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).
(Yes, IDB LCWD will be published on May 24 (or May 29 at the latest).)
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.
FYI, I added Binary Keys to the IDB Features wiki
<http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/IndexedDatabaseFeatures>.
(It may be a good idea for one of our active IDB contributors to make
sure that document is current.)
-AB
