price-db storage via BackEnd?

[Derek Atkins]

Christopher Molnar <molnarc@nebsllc.com> writes:

> I have 3 local business that want to loose windows like real bad, but
> they need a replacement for QuickBooks. With a postgres based package
> this is now possible. (which is why you see the progress on my servlet).

I know that "being a Quickbooks replacement" is on the list of
things to do.  There are a number of ways of doing it.  Being
web-based is one way, but I would suggest that there are other
ways that might give you better security and/or better real-time
data views.

I'll still second your voice that yes, there are people who do want
make this real, and do want to use this feature (or set of features).

> I need a table that is user based configs. The session table tracks the
> last itme they logged in, but doesn't include config info (example,
> default currency, colors, etc).

Personally I don't need this, but I can certainly see why a totally
web-based application would.  OTOH, I'm not convinced that this is
really the right direction to take Gnucash.  Granted, I'm only
speaking for myself, but basically what it sounds like you're doing is
writing your own web-based accounting package based around Gnucash's
postgres tables.

> > I'm balking, mostly because I'm feeling lazy about implementing this.
> 
> I wish I could volunteer to help implement on the GnuCash side, I truly
> do, but I do not have the programming skills (in C) to do this. I can
> help with anything on the Postgres side.

I think that _ANY_ data storage should use the Backend.  Anything that
affects data views or queries should be stored via the backend as
well.  I'm not convinced that colors or other preferences need to be
stored via the backend.

Note that for the pricedb, it would be _best_ if there were a function
to load the pricedb, and then to make one-off adds/deletes (or perhaps
the backend can do the pricedb queries instead of keeping it in RAM?)

Indeed, I'd like to see an end where NOTHING is stored in local cache
RAM (well, obviously the account tree and probably the commodity list
need to be local), and everything else is only grabbed as-needed.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
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