GDA: Status

[Derek Atkins]

Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com> writes:

> I'll leave the specific detail of "CREATE IF NOT EXIST" aside.
>
> I think gda is a general solution that will allow us to meet the
> requirement of supporting sqlite, mysql and postgresql.  Gnucash is
> currently at 2.2.5 moving towards 2.4.  If I could work full time on it,
> the gda backend might be fully integrated into gc in 3 months.  Given I
> only have evenings and weekends (if that), make it 6-9 months.
>
> Re dropping GDA: rather than drop it, I think it would be better to pull
> it into the tree.  That would at least give us the assurance that
> everyone who wants to use the gda backend has a consistent set of fixes
> and functionality.
>
> Phil

I'm not sure I like this idea.  It means that GnuCash has to be
built against all the various particular DB providers, rather than
just the gda library itself.  I.e. it pulls in ALL the GDA build
dependencies, which (IIRC) was a lot of stuff.

It also means we'd need to do a lot of work to make sure our version
is co-inhabitable with the standard version.

Moreover, it means we have to maintain it ourselves, which is even
more work for us!

It's one thing to include a dependency because it's too new and
most distributions haven't started to carry it (e.g. goffice).
It's quite another thing to include a dependency because the
dependency is too much of a moving target and can't figure out what
the heck they want to support, and wont support existing stuff.

Frankly, I really support dropping GDA and moving to DBI.  Yes, I
know it would require more work, but honestly I think you could
re-use a LOT of the work you've already done.

But I'll repeat, I'm not doing the work so I can only make suggestions.
However it really looks like GDA is going to be a support nightmare.

-derek

-- 
       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
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