DB design document

[linas@linas.org]

It's been rumoured that Jean-David Beyer said:
> 
> Patrick Spinler wrote:
> > 
> > Earlier in this converstation, Linas mentioned that SSLizing any
> > application isn't very difficult.
> > 
> > Certainly for the [GPL, I assume you mean] license databases that we're
> > considering using here
> > (Postgres, MySQL, ??) we have the source to both the client library and
> > server and can do this without a great overhead.  I haven't asked but I
> > would imagine that the various db development teams would probably
> > accept and maintain a submission of a SSLized version of their code.

I overstated. There are a number of security & autheentication issues 
involved. Typically, one only runs sql servers on a trusted network,
not on the open network.

> Besides, in Derek's proposal, the developers would need only one
> implementation of most of the software (e.g., the gnc_client), with
> changes only in the gnc_server 

I'm somewhat concerned about creating roll-your-own servers. 
corba or xml should be the way ...

> I imagine, for
> example, that IBM DB2 UDB will be the last dbms ever to be supported by
> the GnuCash team, because it is proprietary and fairly costly. 

Well, that is the point of odbc (see e.g. unixodbc.org).  A single,
uniform api, can auto-access any database.  Write once, connect
anywhere, incluing db2, oracle, etc.  What is connnected to is 
configured in conf files by user.

Now of, course, odbc is pretty ugly as programing interfces go
(its a microsoft thing, and very non-unixy, very windows-like in
design).  So I have nothing against doing a custom postgres native
interface, it might work better/faster.

--linas