DB design document

[David Merrill]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 09:58:25AM -0500, David Merrill wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 08:43:18AM -0600, Bill Gribble wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 20, 2000 at 11:57:47AM +1000, Phillip Shelton wrote:
> > > An account group is just what it sounds like, a group of accounts.
> > > 
> > > All accounts in an account group must be denominated in the same commodity.
> > 
> > I know the attribution is screwy there but I just want to point out
> > that in gnucash, there's no restriction on the currencies or
> > securities of accounts in an account group.  Since *all* of your
> > accounts are part of one account group at the top level, this would
> > enforce one currency everywhere, disallowing any multicurrency use of
> > gnucash.
> 
> So an account group can belong to another account group? The current
> schema doesn't provide for that. Should it? If it does, then we have
> account groups which can contain other account groups or accounts. the
> sub-groups can contain other groups or accounts. The accounts can
> contain other accounts.

Upon further reflection, I think I am opposed to this. Here's why.

Having an account group contain other account groups buys us nothing
but adds complexity. If you can set up an arbitrary number of groups,
each of which contains an arbitrary number of accounts, you can
achieve all of the same effects as you can by including other account
groups.

-- 
Dr. David C. Merrill                     http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                dmerrill@lupercalia.net
Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org
                                       Finger me for my public key

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
		-- Shirley Temple