I don't think there was so much risk of relying on db behaviour much less bugs. There's a DML standard, breaking it would have had massive consequences far beyo

I don't think there was so much risk of relying on db behaviour much less bugs. There's a DML standard, breaking it would have had massive consequences far beyond the web platform - we could have relied on SQLite being broadly compatible within the simple INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE/SELECT subset (I think more could have been done, but this is enough for a start). As for DDL, not much was initially required beyond CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW and CREATE (UNIQUE) INDEX (which in practice have a basic common syntax). IMHO the ask was not anywhere as complex as WebGL.