Customer vs Company

[Derek Atkins]

I agree here.. I'd really like to see SQL (either embedded or
external) become the "default" format and relegate XML to an
external export/exchange format....

The first step is Matthew's PostgresBackend re-write, and then
(maybe) a port to Embedded MySQLServer....  but first things first.

-derek

Dale Alspach <alspach at math.okstate.edu> writes:

> I am not one of the developers so feel free to ignore this or explain why I
> am wrong.
> 
> I would argue that going off in the direction of LDAP is a mistake.
> You have in development another version of gnucash that uses a database.
> Once everything is in database tables any database tools available to
> generate reports, queries, etc., will be available to extract data from
> the database independent of gnucash (provided the table structure is not
> so convoluted as to make the nearly complete understanding of gnucash
> itself necessary to query the database usefully).
> 
> A useful description of the database tables and the dependencies will
> need to be provided and, most important, a set of rules for acceptable
> modification of the data. I think it is perfectly OK to say that
> modifications to transactions are at the user's risk. On the other hand
> modifications to other data, e.g., names and addresses, should not cause
> any problems provided the existence, data type and size requirements are
> met. Implicit in this approach is that the structure of the tables will
> be modified in later versions of gnucash only when there is critical
> need for further development and that such modifications will be well
> advertised so that any user or third party developed queries, reports,
> etc., can be modified to accomodate the changes.
> 
> For the developers there may be a huge gain from going this route.
> Generating reports and printing are probably the two weakest features of
> gnucash. I am not familiar enough with postgres to know but I presume that
> there are already sufficient tools available to allow users to do their own
> reports from query results using whatever spreadsheet, wordprocessing, ..,
> software they choose. Thus the gnucash developers can put their energy into
> other features of gnucash and only provide a reasonable basic set of
> reports in gnucash. www.gnucash.org could provide links/storage for user/third
> party quering and reporting tools and help. (And some scripts for
> synchronizing data between an LDAP server and gnucash. ;))
> 
> Dale Alspach
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-- 
       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 at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available