Is it safe to use HTML5 Web SQL Database API?

Question

After reading http://www.w3.org/TR/webdatabase/ and more specifically:

This document was on the W3C Recommendation track but specification work has stopped. The specification reached an impasse: all interested implementors have used the same SQL backend (Sqlite), but we need multiple independent implementations to proceed along a standardisation path.

I am wondering if it is "safe" (i.e. ongoing support) to use the HTML5 Database API?

Answer 1

It is strongly inadvisable. It has stopped and is being replaced with the IndexedDB API. Eventually, Web SQL Database will be removed from browsers which currently support it.

You might like to read current browser support figures for Web SQL Database and IndexedDB. Web SQL Database has more browsers which currently support it, but Firefox doesn't support it and outweighs Safari, Opera and assorted mobile browsers, and so it's only at about 28% while IndexedDB is near 36% global support. Also, I believe it is generally believed that Microsoft will support IndexedDB in IE10, while the Web SQL Database API will not be going any further.

Update, 2013-02-04: IE10 does support IndexedDB; Web SQL and IndexedDB are both just under 50% support. IndexedDB spec compliance is also very good which has led to IE10, Firefox and Chrome all now supporting it unprefixed.