So after I showed the amazing HTML 5 Presentation to Nathan Freeman, he said the following to me:

6:34:02 PM hrmm
6:34:08 PM I wonder...
6:34:15 PM the JS SQL API...
6:34:25 PM can you write a driver for the SQL backend?
6:34:36 PM John D Head im not sure
6:34:49 PM wouldn't that be interesting?
6:34:53 PM John D Head of course
6:35:00 PM cause then you could use SQL as a declarative syntax
6:35:06 PM would be a reason to revive NotesSQL

Nathan of course was talking about Slide 8 - JS APIs : Web SQL Database. Go play with that slide. And then, assuming you are using Chrome, go look at what it did. Here is a screen shot:



So we now have a local database in the browser that takes SQL commands. It seems to be installed by default with Google Chrome (not sure of other browsers, will need to check). What if we had a modern day Notes SQL driver that allowed a web app to talk to Domino via SQL. What if IBM Project Vulcan's web client could merge data in an NSF and data in a local database into a single UI presentation? Is this just limited to client browser apps or does this have implications of what could become the next DB2NSF?

Now, none of this discussion comes from any private knowledge of IBM Project Vulcan. As far as I know, there has been zero discussion about anything beyond 8.5.2 with the Design Partner crowd. This is just me and Nathan talking out loud. But from where I sit, it does seem that using the core functionality of Xpages with HTML5 and CSS3 functionality (that IBM would add), this becomes the future client platform for IBM Lotus. No matter if it inside a managed client like Notes or from a browser or a mobile device.

It also says that allowing for external data sources to be surfaced into an Xpage should be a feature high on IBM's to-do list (pretty please). And just as Nathan wonders, I wonder if anyone inside IBM is working on Notes SQL Next. Only time will answer that :-) I think we also need to answer Nathan's question of "Can you write a driver for the SQL back end?" - because if you can, wow that is powerful.