Why no SQL Database Backend?

[David T.]

I believe the answer is "history."

Quoting Wikipedia: "Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was in 1998." 


At that time, MySQL was two years old, and I hazard the guess that the developers of Gnucash were not imagining the project needing that level of storage. And so, the program was built on other technologies.

The current database backend is an initial set of steps to transition to a more RDBMS friendly system, but as another user mentioned in a different thread a few hours ago, the data management in Gnucash is deeply embedded in all the code, and will require fundamental code rewriting. I honestly do hope that your inquiry means that you have skill and energy to help with the transition. Many of us wish for it.

David


________________________________
 From: "blfs at comcast.net" <blfs at comcast.net>
To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org 
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 9:13 AM
Subject: Why no SQL Database Backend?
 

I have been puzzling over why GNUCASH was not written on top of an existing database engine. 

There are several excellent GNU databases out there. 

The natural design of a program such as GNUCASH would be the something like SQL-Ledger . 

This would solve all kinds of problems with this program. I understand that the program is not 
multi-user. If this program had been developed on top of existing excellent SQL DB this issue would
be easily solved. 

Also for any kind of real use of this program in an endeavor of any size the user would
need to be able to run SQL programs on the data.  


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