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Bill Gribble grib@gnumatic.com
Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:13:02 -0600


On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 11:50:55AM -0500, Paul Lussier wrote:
> Er, what kind of database?  Do you mean a flat file type of thing
> that gets parsed, or am I going to need to fire up a MySQL/PostreSQL
> server just to do my finances?  Will transactions also move into the
> DB as well?  If so, that then begs the question of how soon will
> there be a web-based front end to all this thereby requiring an
> apache server with SSL?

Heh heh heh.  This is the debate that has actually been going on in
the gnucash devel community for a while, and there's a significant
amount of work that's been done to SQL-ify the gnucash financial
engine.  I'm personally firmly on the side of
gnucash-as-standalone-program with no DBMS dependencies, with a
"spinoff" project aimed at small/medium business that supports
multiple users and a DBMS backend.

> While these ideas do hold a certain attraction, I think it's a
> little unrealistic to expect the average user who just want's a
> Quicken clone on Linux to then need a DBMS, web server and SSL
> running on their system.

You're probably right, and I don't think you need to worry about
gnucash requiring a DBMS or web server administrator anytime in the
foreseeable future.  If we can fit in an "invisible" DB server
(embedded MySQL or Postgres DB) that doesn't require any
administration that might make it in, though.

However, my employer (Gnumatic) *is* working to build web-based
services to integrate with gnucash, and I'm personally right in the
middle of adding SSL and GPG capabilities to the gnucash HTML browser,
so don't be too terribly surprised if you see more web interaction in
the near future.

b.g.