What #NoSQL means to me: No SQL in HTML5

A popular question these days has been "What does NoSQL mean?"

Some say it means "Not only SQL" or something. But to me it means something different.

In my CouchDB talk at the original NoSQL event I introduce CouchDB's document-oriented approach to distribution and concurrency. But mostly I talk about the advantages of local data. CouchDB handles the syncing problem so you can think about your application.

If you build web apps and you aren't paying attention to the HTML5 storage question then you also probably aren't reading this blog.

If you ask me what NoSQL means to me, it means No SQL in HTML5. From my perspective, we seem to be winning that struggle. It's widely recognized that SQL doesn't belong in the browser, but we do want something.

What do we want if not SQL? There is WebSimpleDB which totally does the trick as far as I'm concerned (you can build a Couch on top of it) but I feel for the implementors, as it has a fair amount of unnecessary complexity. I think all in all implementation is more important than specification anyway.

I've been working with friends on the JSONDB specification but I'm afraid I'm stuck for now, waiting for a friendly implementation. The important point I'm trying to make is that there are only a couple of features in WebSimpleDB that we need in order to build a Couch, so if someone is implementing and can point me to a branch where I can start building the JavaScript pieces, maybe we can build a WebCouch, which will be a powerful use case for any specification.