We need to prevent multi-user access to the SQL backend (Re: New GnuCash article on LWN)

Graham Leggett minfrin at sharp.fm
Thu May 20 12:40:52 EDT 2010


On 20 May 2010, at 6:32 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:

>>> Your solution to block the whole database is good enough for me.
>>
>> It's a real shame that a system fundamentally designed to offer multi
>> user access to data should be crippled in such a fashion. In the
>> process, virtually all reasons to use a SQL database are lost.
>
> What was "fundamentally designed to offer multi user access"?

SQL databases.

> GnuCash
> most certainly was not, even when it's using a SQL Database for data
> storage.  Repeat after me:  GnuCash is NOT a Database Application.   
> It's
> a standalone application that happens to be able to use a database
> instead of SQL, but fundamentally it's still a standalone application.
>
> The fact that the DATABASE can be accessed multi-user has nothing to  
> do
> with the fact that GnuCash was NOT designed to handle that and  
> therefore
> needs to protect its data from users who try to do it.

Which over time pretty much renders it useless.

In any practical usage, even in it's simplest form, you start off  
small and simple, and then eventually you reach a point where you want  
to share the file between two people, or share the file with an  
accountant, and you can't.

Which is a real pity, because in my experience gnucash gives about 95%  
of what a small business needs, tripping up on that last little bit.

The fact that gnucash can be asked to save the file in text/xml helps,  
because you can version this in something like svn. But versioning a  
database isn't easy at all.

Regards,
Graham
--



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