Gnucash Data Access API (was: XML size)

[Christopher Browne]

> In a message dated: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 09:39:40 MST
> Alex Barclay said:
> 
> >If I could access the accounts via CORBA then that would be very very cool!
> 
> Ahm, why?  I'm largely, no, make that completely :) ignorant of
> the benefits of CORBA.  What does this buy you, what kind of neat 
> things would it allow for?  On the flip side, what are the downsides 
> of doing this?  

CORBA is a portable way of describing RPC APIs.

- App designer writes up IDL that describes what functions are to be used to 
access data;
- App designer writes up stubs that attach functionality to CORBA "skeleton" 
functions;
- App deployer starts up the application, and writes out an IOR somewhere 
accessible; the IOR is a reference to wherever it is that the App accepts 
connections.
- A client application can then use the IDL to generate "stubs" that allow 
calling the application functions as if they were local calls.

It would make sense to build some IDL for GnuCash to describe how to:
 a) Query transactions;
 b) Query accounts;
 c) Add and modify transactions and accounts.

It would probably make sense for such a program to just be a daemon tied to 
the DBMS, and for it to not have the least bit to do with GUI matters.

Just like PostgreSQL, the default configuration for ORBit, the GNOME CORBA 
ORB, is for communications to be via Unix Domain Sockets rather than TCP/IP, 
which means that only those that explicitly _want_ to be vulnerable to network 
exploits need to be vulnerable...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.mca@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/corba.html
Rules of  the Evil  Overlord #28. "My  pet monster  will be kept  in a
secure cage  from which it  cannot escape and  into which I  could not
accidentally stumble." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>