David Van Couvering 's Blog

Google spreadsheets in trouble - and Java DB can help

As I suspect many of you have noticed, Google has announced an online spreadsheet. And as you also may have noticed, the response hasn't been all positive. See here. And here. And here. There's a theme here: nice idea, but why would my spreadsheet data to Google? They can give all the promises of privacy they want, the trust factor just isn't there. There is also the complaint that it is limited in features, but that's solvable over time. The security/privacy concern – that won't go away, and is an issue for a number of web app wannabes.

I think this is a perfect example of why you need offline storage for Web 2.0 applications. If you were to take the the Google Spreadsheet and enable offline storage, you've removed a major barrier to entry. You get the convenience and power of web applications, without having to put your data on the web. All your spreadsheet data stays safely on your machine, under your control.

This solution would of course use Java DB :). Seriously, Java DB is portable (you can use the same standard JDBC API across XP, Solaris, Linux, even PDAs and phones supporting CDC), it's secure, it maps very well to spreadsheet data, it is transactional and has automatic crash recovery. It also comes with a strong community and solid support when you need it. I suppose you could write it using your own storage APIs, but why would you want to?

Hey, Google, come talk to us, I think we can help you out! :)

Comments

• First of all, Google never made any such grandiose claims as to what Google Spreadsheets was. So what you have listed is one news article disputing the spin another news article.

  Second of all, I used Google spreadsheet the other day to have 10 people plan a weeklong meeting last week. In real time. Concurrently all looking at what each other was doing. It was an incredible productivity boost that we could not find in any other tech we tried.

  You're suggesting that Google try to turn their spreadsheets into yet another desktop spreadsheet app. This is really naive. Why bother? They want a real time, live and synchronous team development tool and WOW did they deliver. Holy sweet mamma does it rock.

  Maybe it's why SUN is in so much trouble, no one understands innovation and solving different problems rather than trying to be a slow imitator.

  - Don
  

  Posted by: don8201 on June 09, 2006 at 06:32 AM

• I think you have a great point that there is a class of applications that can use this collaborative feature. Maybe I wasn't clear in my blog, but I don't think they should remove that capability. I just think they should provide offline storage as an option, if they want to address the class of users who want the flexibility and ease-of-use of a web-based spreadsheet without having to entrust their data to Google.

  Posted by: davidvc on June 09, 2006 at 07:04 AM

• Also, if I want a big Java download, I might as well take advantage and use Swing. And if I really want to be secure, then I won't want it talking to an outside server at all, so "web" still doesn't fit. Seems like web apps have that extra inherent lack of security. If local storage is an "option" (for fast/offline access?), and it wants to be a nice portable web app, then it seems like IE's persistence or Flash or the upcoming WHATWG storage (or the abstraction libraries that wrap all these up) is more likely to be a simple solution that works across many different machines. The amount of available storage space could still be an issue, though.

  Again, not to say Derby's not good for many uses. Just that it's probably not what Google wants here (also as mentioned by Don). And I think the Google-mini-behind-your-corporate-firewall hypotheses are somewhat believable. I could imagine Google making tons of money with things like that.

  Side comment: I haven't used Google Spreadsheet. I don't know if it's any good.

  Posted by: tjpalmer on June 09, 2006 at 07:35 AM

• Well, David. I think the privacy concern you raised is quite legitimate. However, if people "trust" Google with their emails, chats, calendars and you name it, I don't see why the particular spreadsheet might be a privacy whole?

  Besides, Google gives you a way to download your online editing and save locally. And then upload back if you want to.

  Besides, I think you'd mis-concept the Web2.0 a little bit: it's all about shared and user created content. What kind of sharing you can have with offline storage? Please correct me if I wrong.

  On a side note I'd like to mention that their spreadsheet is incredibly slow (at least in Firefox - who cares about damn IE anyways). And I suspect that Derby not in a position to fix this problem now.

  Take care,
  Cos

  Posted by: cos on June 09, 2006 at 11:14 AM

• I think he is correct. Some people are trying to convince themselves that privacy is "no big deal", but that is a VERY big deal if the data is an important piece of data for some company or individual.
  Wouldn't it be easier to just avoid such risk? What sane person would put confidential data in a publicly available application that only God knows who will be able to read it?
  Unless this security risk is eliminated, such web 2.0 tools are limited to unimportant stuff and lack the ability to replace the offline ones. Maybe a mix of both would be better.
  Sometimes I think that most people in IT live in a state of perpetual "suspension of disbelief". They believe IN WHATEVER THEY ARE TOLD. Can we put our heads to think for a second about the security and privacy risks? Don't you think that's worth taking into consideration? Don't you think that could prevent potential users from adopting this piece of software?
  

  Posted by: thiagosc on June 09, 2006 at 11:42 AM

• In response to tjpalmer:

  I agree that there is a barrier in terms of having to download Java. The same barrier, by the way exists for Flash, which you mention as an alternative. However, Java is being made available out-of-the-box by more and more OEM vendors, and updating Java to newer versions is fairly easy and painless. I'm not saying it's a problem, but I'm not convinced it's a big problem.

  And the advantage? You are using an API that is standard and not dependent upon a single vendor, and because of Java's strong compatibility rules, you can be fairly confident that your app will easily port across vendors.

  I also think it's important to understand the value of using a transactional data store like Java DB. Without transactional semantics and support for automatic recovery, you have no way to guarantee that your user's data will not be lost or corrupted on a crash. I don't know enough about FLASH or IE's persistence or WHATWG storage, but I wonder if they provide these semantics.

  Then there's the advantage of a relational model. This allows you to store your data in a structured way that is extensible and flexible, allowing you to build transactions and queries that you had not necessarily planned on writing without having to rebuild your entire data model.

  Finally, JavaDB allows you to encrypt the entire database, keeping your data secure even on your own machine. It also allows you to store the database on a USB stick, so you can take your data with you and run from any web-enabled computer or kiosk while you're on the road, or move between machines when you have multiple machines.

  It seems to me for a spreadsheet app, all these qualities have value.

  I don't understand why Google wouldn't want this market, if they could have it. Or would they rather have everyone store everything on their servers? Also, I don't understand your comment about "Google-mini-behind-your-corporate-firewall hypotheses," can you explain?

  Posted by: davidvc on June 09, 2006 at 04:19 PM

• In response to Cos: yes, you're right, a big part of Web 2.0 is about a "read/write" web, where what you do is visible to everyone. And I think Don shows how that can have great value in a spreadsheet app. And maybe that's all Google wants.

  But I also think there is an application space where the application is web-based, and thus available anywhere and no install required, but your data is local. Maybe that's not called Web 2.0, but I still think it has great value.

  Posted by: davidvc on June 09, 2006 at 04:22 PM

• Why should I trust Google to not write their software to send everything to Google even if it is then stored locally as well?After all, that's what people claim Microsoft does against all evidence to the contrary (including being able to monitor your network traffic and nothing going out, something that will never be possible with a web application).
  With Ajax, it's oh so easy to just do xml requests with small sections of the data every time you access the server for anything, most people would never notice Google is reading over their shoulder.
  I won't trust Google with my data for any reason, no matter how much they promise me it's safe with them (in fact, the harder they shout they're the good guys the less I trust them personally, the Maffia, Stalin, Mugabe, all shout(ed) they were good guys as well). If it becomes a choice of giving custody of my identity and all my financial and other data to Google or dropping offline completely I will choose the latter alternative.

  Posted by: jwenting on June 10, 2006 at 12:34 PM

• -- Companies -- What company trust its corporate's e-mail accounts to gmail ? (none). Would this change with its financial data stored and calculated at google's spreadsheet ? (please respond yourself). Does really colaboration matter at spreadsheet level ? I don't think so, but if a company find useful this feature, this must be done at its datacenter, not google's datacenter.

  -- Individuals -- currently people spend their money buying laptops/desktops with powerful chips (AMD/Intel-- above 1 GHz chips). Would this people throw away its laptops and feature-rich staroffice/openoffice capabilities just to rely his personal calcs on google for its network-dependant remote spreadsheet ?
  

  Posted by: raulp1 on June 11, 2006 at 10:16 AM

• colaboration at spreadsheet (or wordprocessor document) level is already supported in MS Office (though no concurrent editing in the versions I've seen).
  Just place the files on a network share (doh!), and modern office applications will track who did what if you tell them to.

  Posted by: jwenting on June 11, 2006 at 11:16 PM

• Another spin on this would be DabbleDB written in Smalltalk and a really great example of Web 2.0. Take a look at http://www.dabbledb.com/ . I took a look at the video and was impressed with the functionality. Really cool stuff.

  Posted by: snoobab on June 11, 2006 at 11:48 PM

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