Transaction GUIDs [Was: Writing a Sharp Zaurus PDA GnuCash Companion]

[Derek Atkins]

Unique GUIDs must apply to all _objects_, regardless of type.

-derek

"Colin Pinkney" <Colin.Pinkney@marconi.com> writes:

> I was just looking at how GUIDs are generated, but couldn't quite figure it
> out. Seems to  have something to do with randomly selecting md5sums of
> files that constantly change.
> 
> I'm know very little about pseudo-random algorithms and want to keep it
> simple so I'm hoping /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid has enough entropy. But I
> guess in the end as long as it's a unique 128bit number (stored in hex
> format) it doesn't really matter, does it? Must the uniqueness apply to all
> transactions within a data file or just for a particular account?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Colin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Josh Sled <jsled@asynchronous.org>@lists.gnucash.org on 21/08/2002 16:19:45
> 
> Sent by:  gnucash-devel-admin@lists.gnucash.org
> 
> 
> To:   Colin Pinkney <Colin.Pinkney@marconi.com>
> cc:   Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>, gnucash-devel@lists.gnucash.org
> 
> Subject:  Re: Writing a Sharp Zaurus PDA GnuCash Companion
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 10:53:53AM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 
> | The documentation is relatively ad-hoc.  I don't know if
> | there is a schema/DTD.  We certainly don't use one during
> | the read/write operations (we build the XML by hand).
> 
> There is some DTDage in src/doc/xml/, but it's bitrotted comparred to
> the code [in src/backend/file/].
> 
> | "Colin Pinkney" <Colin.Pinkney@marconi.com> writes:
> 
> | > The idea is to use the same file format so that it will then be
> relatively
> | > easy for me to write a sync conduit to synchronise the PDA and desktop
> data
> | > files. I use GnuCash on my Linux PC all the time so I've had a look at
> the
> | > data files and it looks relatively straight forward, but it would still
> | > help if there were some documentation on the file format. Is there any?
> Is
> | > it using a standard XML schema/DTD?
> 
> No standard schema, yes on the DTD, though as Derek says the DTD files
> are not used for parsing or generation.
> 
> The main thing that would need to be synchronized is the GUIDs,
> specifically
> for accounts.  And, ensuring that the Sharp side is going to respect the
> engine constraints.
> 
> If you're not using CVS you should be; the modules infrastructure/approach
> in CVS will let you use the engine module [and even the backend module]
> independently of the UI, reports, SQL backend, &c.  This might save you
> some time in the long run, while levaraging work on the existing code base.
> 
> But I'm not quite sure what you mean by a Zarus companion app... does it
> provide targeted functionality [expense tracking], or are you attempting
> to get as much GnuCash functionality as possible, but on the Zarus?
> 
> ...jsled
> 
> --
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-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available