XML size (was: no subject)

[Derek Atkins]

Paul Lussier <plussier@mindspring.com> writes:

> I don't know how else to say this, but I LOVE THE ASCII TEXT FILE!
> Please don't change it, at least not for the average home user.

Why does it matter to you what format it's in?  Are you actually
LOOKING at the data file?  Using what tool?  And what do you do with
it?  Wouldn't an "ASCII Export" be more appropriate for you?  That way
you can easily get at the data you want.

> Performance is no everything, and once it's loaded, it's loaded and 
> you're done waiting.

True, performance is NOT everything, but it is still important.  Sure,
once you wait for it to load it's there, but why wait when you don't
have to?  You do realize that even with a relatively small dataset
your Gnucash application can rize up to the tens of megabytes of core?
That's larger than your X server.  That kind of precludes using a
low-end machine, doesn't it?

> It's very difficult to run sed 's/Salary/Salary:Taxable/g' on a 
> database.  I don't *want* to have to know SQL to do the same thing, 
> nor do I want to run an SQL database on my system or have to wait for 
> *that* to start up.

Note that this will not only fail to do what you want, but could leave
your data file unreadable and unusable.  This is _EXACTLY_ the kind of
thing that we DON'T want people to be doing!  If you want to change
your data you should use the application to do it.  If you don't then
you could destroy some of the invariants of the data (for instance,
only one account may exist with any particular name).

Also, with an _embedded_ SQL server (which is what I'm talking about)
there is no startup time.  There is no separate SQL database process.
Gnucash would start and you're up and running.  That's the whole
point.  You don't need to load the data file; you access it in
real-time when you need it.

-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
       warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available