Performance improvement for xml loads (+comments)

Robert Graham Merkel rgmerk@mira.net
Wed, 6 Dec 2000 11:51:13 +1100


Derek Atkins writes:
 > That's still not a fair comparrison.  I can go compress the
 > old binary format, too.  Let's compare apples to apples here
 > and leave file compression out of it.

You certainly can go and compress the old binary format, and it
shrinks a file down to about 1/3rd the size of what a compressed
new file looks like.  However, the point remains that the released 
version isn't going to cause gnucash data files to explode in size -
in fact for Joe User, the size of their data files is going to go
down.

Finally, I'd just like to make the point that while the XML format
currently has some performance problems, it's here, and it largely
works, it has features simply not possible to support with the 
old binary format, and will continue to play an important role as an 
import/export format when we start to use a database for the backend -
unlike any new binary format which will be essentially a dead end.

We can't go back to the old format, and I can't see how ripping out
the work we've done and starting from scratch is an appropriate use of
time.

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Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk@mira.net

"We are excited and optimistic about its usage going 
forward and, yes, we can teach penguins the military 
close-order drill", Mark Norton, US Department of Defense. 
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