Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking "Illegal" databases?

I've got Safari (5.1.10) > Prefs > Advanced > Database storage set to "None allowed before asking", and although not every website that places a doc in /Users/artie/Library/Safari/LocalStorage asks, what I almost invariably find there is an 8 KB doc that looks more or less like this:


The exceptions I've noted are the docs placed by Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation, which weigh in at 500-600 KB and look like this and this, respectively (truncated for posting purposes...full text available by request).

Can anybody read those docs and tell me whether the Wiki organizations are somehow subverting my pref, or am I just getting paranoid over perfectly acceptable website behavior?

Thanks.

those look more like rules than data? I don't see any actual data there in my brief look?

by data, I mean keywords, dates, search history, purchase history, page view preferences, shopping cart contents, advertising preferences and affiliates, that sort of thing.

From glancing at the information, those are structures, but there's no data in them. It looks like if you set that preference in Safari, Web sites are allowed to specify how they would store data, but aren't actually allowed to put any data in the database.

Thanks for the input, guys.

I've got absolutely no idea what a database should look like; the two I posted are notable only for their extreme (relative) size which, by its uniqueness, suggests that they exceed their permissible limits.

I'm not even sure why Wikipedia, let alone Wikimedia, would need to place a database.

An additional thought... Since I never retain cookies, those databases would have no data to store other than my immediate Wikipedia search and lord knows what for Wikimedia.

(I wonder if the parts of those databases that I didn't post have any relevant content?)

Maybe the framework stays but the data gets stripped each time, just lIke the cookies get removed? That would be a fancy trick.

I've got Cookie set to delete unwanted databases every 60 seconds, so while your scenario, unlikely as it sounds, maaay be possible, it's not a possibility in my instance.

I started looking at the files on my computer and it appears they are database definitions and the database itself is implemented in memory and never actually stored on the computer. Having the definitions stored on the drive speeds the process because there is no delay downloading the definition. When the memory is released the database content simply goes away.

Thanks; that sounds reasonable, but I just found this, which seems to contradict your conclusion, in Safari 5.1.10 help:


Even accepting it, though, I still find it odd that Wikipedia's and Wikimedia's databases are so large and complex compared to the others in my experience. (And why does Wikimedia need a database at all?)

These waters are awfully muddy... For instance, why does eBay request database space before it allows me to log in, and why do I frequently find databases from websites that never requested space?

I looked at the Wikipedia .localstorage and one reason it is so long is because it has unique setups for a very large number of different platforms, browsers, etc. There is even a setup there for Playstation. The same thing could be accomplished by first identifying the platform and then downloading the template for that platform which requires additional processing on the server, but it appears Wikipedia has chosen to perform the template selection on the client instead and therefore has to download all the various templates.


This may sound flippant but the answer to all your questions is those are design decisions made by the site developer and there is no one "right" or "standard" way to do it. While Apple can and does enforce design standards on applications available through the app store, but there is no possible way for anyone to enforce design standards on web developers other than possible a "white list" of web sites Apple users are allowed to visit and I can't imagine anyone tolerating that.

Thanks for shedding light on those mysterious local storage, not database, items.

(Safari 5.1.10) I allowed eBay to store a database just to see what would happen, and I discovered that rather than affecting /Users/artie/Library/Safari/LocalStorage, it affected /Users/artie/Library/Safari/Databases.

It seems that websites can place templates in Local Storage at their whim and must ask for space only for subsequent databases, so my "illegal databases" are actually thoroughly legal templates placed by websites that, with the exception of eBay, have never followed up on their templates by asking for database space.

That, the facts that I've seen local storage items referred to as databases, and extensions actually do store databases in /Users/artie/Library/Safari/LocalStorage, and my inability to find any clarifying info about local storage in either Safari help or elsewhere all came together and resulted in my confusion.