The Gnucash database?

[Neil Williams]

On Monday 19 July 2004 6:58, blfs at comcast.net wrote:
> > > It would seem to me that the most natural way to write
> > > Gnucash would be to write it for a flat text file in the Unix
> > > tradition. 

When you actually look at the detail of your proposal, you'd see that it isn't 
natural at all. When you talk of a database, you are still thinking in two 
dimensions - a SQL file to import only lists CREATE table and INSERT 
statements - that can populate tables but you need a separate routine to 
create the joins between tables, the relationships, the meaning to the data. 

> > > If it is not trivial to translate a flat text file to 
> > > the format required for Gnucash that is a rather serious
> > > design flaw. 

GnuCash currently uses an XML file - it is plain text in as far as it is ASCII 
and can be read by any text editor but it requires knowledge to translate any 
other format into the GnuCash XML format - knowledge of the original data as 
well as knowledge of the format. Besides, XML is not going to be the 
preferred file storage format for ever.

> > > I can certainly load a flat text file into any 
> > > database I know of with relative ease.

But you cannot make sense of that database - it is just reams of meaningless 
output. It's not linked, structured or organised in a way that can be used 
without another program / script.  GnuCash, like any financial package, is a 
lot more than just a list of transactions.

> If you cant query the data easily loaded into the Gnucash program
> without using the Gnucash interface that is a problem.

You are now mixing import with export. Exporting data into any format from the 
existing XML is easy using XSLT. Whether the output data is useful is another 
issue. You will almost certainly lose some of the meaning of the data in the 
transformation which will make transforming the data back into GnuCash XML 
difficult without a lot of user intervention.

> I have installed 
> the program and read a little about it, but I am really stuck on this point
> that it cannot import a plain flat text file.  I dont understand this.

Can you expect Gimp to create a photograph from a text file?

Can you expect an MP3 player to accept text input?

Just because OpenOffice.org data files are XML, does that mean OOo can use any 
XML file? No. Does it mean OOo is a database? No. Does it mean that OOo 
should be able to create a complete presentation or document from a flat text 
file? No.

GnuCash needs the input file to be of a specific format, which happens to be 
XML at the moment. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in that.

> Further, if Gnucash is a financial program it is a database 

No it's not a database, not at all. It is no more a database than Gimp is an 
email client. GnuCash can use a database, but that is just for the backend 
storage. All the meaning to the data is provided by the calculations within 
the GnuCash engine. 

> no matter how 
> you want to define database this type of program has to be one.  It
> is impossible to have a financial program that is not a database.

Not true. Quicken isn't a database either.

GnuCash handles data and it has a data store for user data but that makes it  
no more a database than Excel, Gimp or KMail.

There are differences between a data handler, a data source and a database. 
Besides, what most people think of as a database is actually a database 
management program - the database itself is completely devoid of meaning.

-- 

Neil Williams
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