The Gnucash database?

[blfs]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jdebert" <jdebert at garlic.com>
To: "blfs" <blfs at comcast.net>
Cc: <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 9:19 PM
Subject: Re: The Gnucash database?


> blfs wrote:
> >
> > First I know next to nothing about Gnucash, but I
> > understand this subject.
> >
>
> How about understanding gnucash, then?
>
> Use the source, Luke!
>
> > I have read the replys and now I am confused about
> > another point.  Why isnt Gnucash based on an SQL
> > database?  I would also think the design should be
> > modular so the database engine is seperate from the
> > program.
> >
>
> Because that's the way it is.
>
> IIRC this has been beaten to death months ago, if not years ago.
>
> There are other ways to do what you seem to want, wrt importing data.
>
> I imported years of ascii capture logs of online banking sessions into
> gnucash before the bank went to web banking.
>
> I edited the text files and reformatted them for import to gnumeric and
> quattro pro and even excel then imported them into gnucash or used a
> filter to convert them to QIF. I think there is still some old excel
> macro or script around somewhere to convert excel files to qif and back.
>
> There may no longer be any direct import tools but if you dig around you
> may find some stuff to do intermediate conversions. You may even be able
> to feed stuff through quicken to get the qif files to import.
>
> Perhaps you'll even find the old tools that do what you want. Perhaps
> even older versions of gnucash would be useful.
>
> Look around. Do some searches. Try freshmeat, sourceforge, rpmfind,
> tucows and the linux archive sites like tsx-11, etc.
>
> Maybe hire someone to do what you want.
>
> If you want things to be different, no one is going to keep you from
> rolling your own accounting software.
>
> I strongly doubt that you are going to persuade the maintainers to
> change things.
>
> BTW, there are tools capable of exporting gnucash's xml files to other
> formats. You need only look for them.
>
> =-=

Forget about the stinking importing issue.  This is
important but not nearly as important as the design
issue.

I have gone into the mail archives and apparently the decision has been made
to move GNUcash to SQL.

It seems pretty obvious to me anyway that the best solution would be to make
gnucash dependent
and separate from a database software program.

Now in the windows world there are two kinds of
programs that resemble Gnucash.  There are programs
like Quicken and Peachtree, which are canned programs
and offer little flexibility.  I repeat that I am ignorant
about Gnucash, but it seems to me that this resembles
the design of gnucash.

There is also another class of small business accounting
software that is built on top of Access.  These are far
superior in my opinion as they offer the user much more
flexibility.

Can someone please explain to me the design of the
gnucash software program or point me to documentation
describing it?

One thing that I don't understand.  I keep reading that
this and that is not done because this is all relying on a
volunteer effort.  But this is a serious software area.
If serious people were using this program this would
not be an issue.

I know that this program is sooner or later going to
become very important.  I am a little concerned that
in none of the responses to my original post no one has
clearly explained the design of this program.