46078 - Bookmarks SQL Database

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 498596

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jess H. Brewer]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12-20 i686; en-US; m16)
Gecko/20000617
BuildID:    2000061714

A directory tree is no way to manage a large database of URLs.  Better to
incorporate a built-in [thin] SQL database for Bookmarks [and other things]. 

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce: Try to find a URL in a big Bookmarks tree.  
Try to find a URL in a really big Bookmarks tree.

Actual Results:  							

Expected Results:  							

How often have you agonized over which pigeonhole a neat new URL belongs in and
ended up making copies in several places?  And then you still can't find it
again!  It seems strange that no browsers have replaced the intrinsically flawed
organization of bookmarks by folders (in what amounts to a simple directory
tree) by a database where URLs are located in SQL searches.  Does anyone doubt
that this is the right way to manage such data?  

Padraic Renaghan has written a nice tool called "bookmarker" (see 
http://renaghan.com/pcr/bookmarker.html ) that stores bookmarks in 
an SQL database (usually MySQL) and uses php tools to search and 
display them.  However, installing bookmarker involves running your own httpd,
MySQL or other SQL and php; this is too much to ask of a casual Web surfer.  It
is possible to run bookmarker server sites and let people sign up as users, but
this doesn't satisfy the "God bless the child who's got his own" criterion.  A
browser should be able to stand alone.  

To "do it right" would probably require building the World's Thinnest SQL, but
once that was done there are many other uses the browser could put it to.  Mail
comes immediately to mind.  See 
http://www.mozilla.org/blue-sky/misc/199805/intertwingle.html - a project which
I think could make good use of a built-in SQL.  

Thanks for listenin' -- Jess

Comment 1

[Jess H. Brewer]

Attachment: Check out the Bookmarks Database idea in "Free Ideas"

Comment 2

[Eric Hodel]

You might want to attach RDF to your idea, but its a lot of work, confirming for
future + helpwanted and assigning to [e-mail]

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

unsetting milestone on this. adding RFE to summary.  bugs like this get more
attention when they are accompanied by a patch.

Comment 4

[Will Sargent]

I'm working on a project which does this.  E-mail me at [e-mail]
for more info.

Comment 5

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Netscape Nav triage team: this is not a Netscape beta stopper.

Comment 6

[Olav Vitters]

*** Bug 179338 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Jonas Geiregat]

(In reply to comment #0)

> A directory tree is no way to manage a large database of URLs.  Better to
> incorporate a built-in [thin] SQL database for Bookmarks [and other things]. 

I do not agree, incorporating a built-in SQL-database would be a bad idea. It
would slow things down, and that only to manage bookmarks. I know bookmarks are
very important for some people .. but still a SQL database is just to much.

Comment 8

[AndrewM]

Presumably this bug can be marked fixed now that SQLite is used for bookmarks and history storage (Places)?

Comment 9

[Jess H. Brewer]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Presumably this bug can be marked fixed now that SQLite is used for bookmarks
> and history storage (Places)?

I'm looking forward to seeing it in SeaMonkey.  (I am fond of an integrated 
browser + mail client.)  If it is restricted to FireFox 3 (i.e. if SeaMonkey 
is orphaned) I may have to grit my teeth and cope with the loose coupling 
between FireFox and ThunderBird, but I'd rather not.  Anyway I guess the 
real work has been done, and I'm prepared to be very grateful as soon as 
I can use the results.  In the interim I have pretty much resigned myself 
to treating Bookmarks as a "bag of marbles" repository; otherwise it got 
to be more work to remember which [sub](sub){sub}folder(s) I stuck things 
in.  I wonder: did my original suggestion have anything to do with the 
development of Places with SQLite, or was it just an idea whose time came?  

Either way, thanks!

Comment 10

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

Isn't SQLite now used also in SeaMonkey?

Comment 11

[Philip Chee]

> Isn't SQLite now used also in SeaMonkey?
Yes.