The Web Applications Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Indexed Database API. This document defines APIs for a database of records holding simple values and hierarchical objects. Each record consists of a key and some value. Moreover, the database maintains indexes over records it stores. An application developer directly uses an API to locate records either by their key or by using an index. A query language can be layered on this API. An indexed database can be implemented using a persistent B-tree data structure. Comments are welcome through 18 December. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a Working Draft of Service Workers. This specification describes a method that enables applications to take advantage of persistent background processing, including hooks to enable bootstrapping of web applications while offline. The core of this system is an event-driven Web Worker, which responds to events dispatched from documents and other sources. A system for managing installation, versions, and upgrades is provided. The service worker is a generic entry point for event-driven background processing in the Web Platform that is extensible by other specifications. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.