The Gnucash database?

[Neil Williams]

On Saturday 24 July 2004 5:43, Jack Gates wrote:
> Through out this thread people have been talking about Flat Files and it
> has been stated that there are different meanings of flat files.
>
> My question is what is a flat file as opposed to what?  Flat File and
> ______ file.

Did you read Mark's post (the one before mine that you replied to?)

> > I get the feeling that some people are reading "flat file" to mean
> > arbitrary text such as the U.N. Charter or an advertisement for shirts.
> > Typically that's not at all what it means; for automatic data processing
> > purposes a "flat file" is rigidly structured and has a precise meaning
> > amenable to calculation -- it's what ADP used for everything, before
> > there were DBMSs.

This email is a flat file but that is where the confusion starts - no-one 
seriously expects to be able to import GnuCash data from this loose format. 
To import real data, you need rules. Rules that give meaning, rules that make 
a file valid or invalid. email has rules - the headers and MIME are rule 
based flat file formats. XML has rules, HTML has rules. QIF and OCX have 
different rules that are suitable for financial data.

The confusion starts when you talk about converting these formats - it always 
appears simple but it never is simple.

Take a simple task. I tried to export my address book in CSV so that I could 
port it to another platform. CSV has very relaxed rules and the importer 
needs to ask a series of questions about what each value means.  It took so 
long to do it on the other platform that I gave up. I just waited for regular 
people to email me and entered the addresses internally. One day I'll learn 
LDAP.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
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