JD on EP

Artur Bergman at O'Reilly walks through the components. (He mentions "Dojo Offline", and it looks like this is based upon "Dojo Storage", which is based upon Adobe Flash Player's local data storage.)

Nick Gonzalez at TechCrunch says that the implementation within Google Reader already accommodates auto-synch with the server, once reconnected. (Such data-synch is usually an application-level implementation step, once you have the local storage API to build with.)

Martin LaMonica at CNET has some storage details: "The local SQLite database, while small in size, is capable of saving gigabytes of data, although Google intends to set up Google Gears so that Web application providers have to ask permission from users to store data locally. Google engineers have already started work on adding full-text searching to SQLite, Upson said."

In commentary I've read so far, some of the emphasis seems to be on larger-than-cookiesized local storage... some of the commentary focuses more on offline synch... I haven't seen much yet on the developmental angles of how SQL queries can be done clientside, and how relational searches differ from straight token:value cookie storage.

David Berlind at ZDNet has more details, and some original reporting:

The technology consists of three primary components. First, a local "server" which is not really a local Web server but rather a means for capturing all of the Javascript and HTML-based logic that drives the functionality of an application. Second, a local database using the open source-based SQLite for persistence of any data associated with the offline functionality... Google also contributed the necessary Javascript APIs for accessing SQLite from Javascript...

In the interview, [Google's Linux Upson] wouldn't comment on what Adobe's interests are. But I managed to track down Adobe's vice president of product management Michele Turner who told me:

"Google got a hold of us and said they were coming out with an offline capability for browser-based applications and they thought it had implications for our Apollo [runtime]. So, we sat down with them and found out that if you looked across the three main components of Google Gears, we were developing identical technology to facilitate the offline component of the Apollo runtime (a component that allows Internet-enabled applications that run on the Apollo runtime to continue running without connectivity). For example, they're using SQLite and we were already incorporating SQLite into Apollo. So, now we're aligning our efforts with Google on things like the synchronous and asynchronous calls that must be made to the SQLite database in order to enable the offline capability."

Turner went on to say that Adobe intends to make Google Gear functionality more accessible to developers working with Flex and Flash action script. But she wasn't sure when that functionality would become available.

Google Gears API blog:

"Gears today covers what we think is the minimal set of primitives required for offline apps. It is still a bit rough and in need of polish, but we are releasing it early because we think the best way to make Gears really useful is to evolve it into an open standard. We are releasing Gears as an open source project and we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and Opera and other industry partners to make sure that Gears is the right solution for everyone. We also want to get early feedback, community involvement, and rapid iterations."

Cool... Dion Almaer already has an example up! (The interesting part here is the triage he takes upon the significant problem of synching with the remote machine when reconnected.)

Dion also has news on how the Dojo folks will be wiring up their API to this local backend.

Mike Chambers has some conversation starting up, particularly about the SQLite and embedded-database aspects.

Scott Hyndman has info on Gears/Dojo/Flash integration... more word in his blog tomorrow.

JD,

Veery interesting. When I first looked at and wrote about Google Gears (www.humdinger-media.com/wblog/?p=71), I immediately thought of Apollo. It's good to know a little more about the background and the collaboration as far as Google Gears is involved.

Just in case you or anyone else is interested, there's a guy called Rusty who also did a very nice job taking Google Gears out for a test spin. You can read his tutorial with step-by-step instructions at: www.seroundtable.com/archives/013657.html

And there's a really cool dude, called Nick, who actually developed a working Google Gears solution to cache WordPress in PHP. You can read about his endeavors at: blog.assembleron.com/2007/05/31/google-gears-caching-of-wordpress-in-php/#comment-2943

(Hey, I'm just trying to help to spread the word about Google Gears to those who are interested . . . I'm not getting paid or anything to promote this kick-tush technology.)

Thanks again,

WebGyver
--------------------------
Making web stuff out of bubble gum and kitchen chemicals.
www.webgyver.info

Google's Gears discussion group.

A new database schema editor based on mxGraph is now available at:

http://www.mxgraph.com/demo/mxgraph/schema.html

The editor can be used to create a database in Google Gears.

Features include:
- Drag and drop user interface
- Graphical schema definition
- Properties dialog for columns
- Command history (undo/redo)
- Graphical creation of entity relations
- Creation of create table statements
- Creation of database in Google Gears
- Export of diagram as XML

mxGraph is a JavaScript library that uses built-in browser capabilities to provide an interactive drawing and diagramming solution. Target applications are Web based applications that require workflow/BPM, diagram, network, or general graph editing to be available in-place on a Web page. mxGraph is free for non-commercial use.

this is the time that microsoft has to make adcenter free for 2 years ,,, google is trying to make free charges for its web-based softwares ..

microsoft dont need adcenter money , so let it be free for 2 years or 5 years .. MS must play the google way ..