SQLite Backend Data

[Russell Mercer]

Mark,

The sqlite backend is a complete sqlite database.  If you want to run SQL
queries on it, the following website should be your first stop for sqlite
information:

http://www.sqlite.org/docs.html

The guid field that you keep running across is a Globally Unique
IDentifier.  That is the primary key for each of the tables you are looking
at, and or is the foreign key referencing another linked table.  There is no
parsing back to plain english as there is nothing to understand other than
it should be unique among all other tables and records in your database.
For more information, you might check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_unique_identifier

Lastly, I think a caution is prudent.  Before you do any queries, etc. with
your gnucash data file, I would make sure you back it up.  Not knowing the
programming of gnucash, I don't know what types of things it is sensitive to
in the sqlite file, and it would be terrible if an SQL query inadvertently
corrupted the data file.  I've been curious about this myself but have
refrained due to the same concern.

This is just my yeoman level insight, but I hope it helps.

Russell

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Mark <HerrPoetry at hailmail.net> wrote:

> Is the SQLite backend file that Gnucash creates usable for custom SQL
> queries? If so, where can I read about how to do it? I've taken a quick look
> at the tables, and I notice a lot of fields with variations on the name
> "guid", filled with what looks like hex data. Can one parse these back into
> plain English?
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