A Idea for GNU Cash - Please read, you might find my proposition interesting

[BenoitGrégoire]

On Tuesday 12 August 2003 04:46, David Durst wrote:
> I read your article on that I had found through slashdot.
>
> Interesting enough I find myself in a very similar position as yourself,
> that is having a project that deals with Account and Business and
> finding that there is a lack of developers to support the size of the
> project.  By far GNU Cash is more developed than my project but there is
> another similar project to mine that you may have heard of, Compiere ERP
> + CRM.
>
> Now before I get a rant about Compiere (Don't know if you have had any
> experience with it or not)
>
> The idea had dawned on me that combining projects mine, yours, compiere
> is probably not the best idea.  But we can support each other in away.
>
> You had mentioned that there is an accounting back end to GNU Cash that
> lack RPC etc.. etc.. wel maybe RPC is not the best way to go because it
> takes then some specific languages to use it, hard to debug etc.. etc..
> once again you would only be raising the ramp up time for people to
> contribute.
>
> Heres the idea we discuss with Compiere Project leads, You and I how a
> standardized XML protocol would work for a back end.
>
> If there is a standardized protocol we can all develop using it. now
> Allowing our front end applications to use any back end it choses.
>
> It also brings in a interesting scenario of multiple segments of a
> company to use different back ends depending on their specific needs and
> having these backend capable of communicating easily.
>
> Tell me if you think there maybe any merit to my idea.
> Or you can just tell me to jump in a lake.
>
> BTW the URL to my project is:
> http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/obserpcrm

Well, one thing we could do is chat OFX 2.0.  It's XML based, very well 
documented, a DTD is available, and was designed to request, send and modify 
financial data on a remote system through HTTP.  It's also an industry 
standard.

Writing an OFX server for gnucash is doable, but will require a considerable 
amount of time, especially on my part as libofx isn't there yet.  But 
building on to direct connect support, I really think it's doable.  

Now if only I could find someone to pay me to work full time on libofx.  I'm 
sure a generic library that can do communication using the OFX protocol 
between two apps as well as import and export in most financial formats has a 
lot of value to many parties.

-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/