The Gnucash database?

[blfs]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Linas Vepstas" <linas at linas.org>
To: "Mark H. Wood" <mhwood at ameritech.net>
Cc: <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 6:07 PM
Subject: Re: The Gnucash database?


> Hi Mark,
>
> Nice try, but I'll argue every point...
>
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 10:33:18AM -0500, Mark H. Wood was heard to
remark:
> > I think I finally understand some of the confusion swirling around this
> > thread.
> >
> > Financial data certainly are flat.
>
> And so starts the confusion ... this is not true.
>
> > They have been so for as far back as
> > I'm aware of anyone keeping financial data.  A ledger is flat.  The
>
> Not true.  The paper is flat, the data on it is not.
>
> Don't confuse the messenger for the message.
>
> > important part of a statement is flat.
>
> Not true. Each journal entry made refers to an account which is in
> a different (paper) book.  Each account refers to a client, whose
> name, phone and address appear only on the cover of the book.
>
> To track down a purchase using a traditional pen-ink-paper accounting,
> you might open 2,3,4 or more books, and flip across multiple pages.
> To compute your net worth, you will finger through every folder
> in your file cabinet.  There is nothing "flat" about this.
>
> > Financial *reports* are, to a machine, meaningless BLOBs.  When rendered
> > on a viewing medium they are spatial arrangements of tables and
formatted
> > data from individual rows which are highly meaningful to humans, but
> > useless for re-input to computers.  But you don't store reports in an
> > accounting system; you synthesize them when asked.
>
> Bing. The person who started this thread beasically stated
>
> "I have this report, I want to import it into gnucash. Why is
> gnucash so stupid that it can't do this?"
>
> > All this is representable in tables,
>
> Gnucash has several dozen tables; I haven't counted recently.
>
> > before
> > there were DBMSs.
>
> DBMS's were invented to solve the accounting problem ... you see how far
> we've come ... There are lots of DBMS's but the accounting problem
> remains unsolved.
>
> --linas
>
> --
> pub  1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) <linas at linas.org>
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I have played around with this program a bit and I can
see that there is a lot of cleverness and work put into
this program.

I havent quite figured it out though.  Usually in these types
of programs one is faced with a menu of invoicing,
purchasing, writing checks and so forth.

  Anyway, being completely ignorant of this program I am in no position to
make any judgements about it.

It would certainly be more useful to me if I could input
data into it.  It seems pretty clear to me anyway that this
program would also be more useful in general if it could interact with
gnumeric.