sql version

Michelle Knight michelle at msknight.com
Fri Dec 24 13:48:40 EST 2010


Apologies for putting a few extra thoughts in here.

A system which is reliant on other components can sometimes end up at the 
mercy of those components and can, itself, have its future course guided not 
by its own volition, but ends up following the lead of some other system.

We go bananas at work because we get particular systems which dictate that 
they will run on a certain version of Windows, need a certain version of Office 
loaded, etc., etc., it gets messy. Personally, I love a self contained 
application that doesn't make my administrative life a misery.

Who knows what is going to happen to the various SQL projects over the course 
of coming years? MySQL may have fallen to Oracle but with their money behind 
it, it might be the only one left standing if the various SQL forks fail.

My own GnuCash files go back to 2003 and I do find myself worrying about their 
stability, the load and save time and also that there are a fair number of 
transactions to go through ... that little handle in the scroll bar on the 
right gets ever smaller. If there was a way to split it down in to annual 
segments, it might help, only loading the the years detail that are needed.

I do find myself wishing that I could do as I do with some e-mail systems 
...move an archive time line ... so that if I needed to adjust something a 
couple of years ago, I can move the archive line back to that time period, 
make the change, let everything re-calculate itself and then move the archive 
line back forward again so there are only a certain number of items to handle.

Gnucash itself is relatively easy to install and just use as it is. Add on top 
of it the necessity to load, configure and run an SQL engine and some sections 
of the user base might have difficulty.

I hang on the edges of the L2J project and there are always the questions from 
the new people who aren't programmers and don't understand how to install and 
configure a database engine; particularly when different versions of engines 
appear and there are issues of compatibility with the SQL commands themselves 
as they progress through their own versions.

At the moment, backing up Gnucash is a mater of copying the files. If Gnucash 
does go SQL, then it will need to add tools to make it easier for those who 
aren't familiar with handling databases and SQL engines.

Heck, it might be wise for Gnucash to come with its own SQL engine fork.

Michelle.


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