Gnucash versions

[Geert Janssens]

On woensdag 5 oktober 2011, foxylady337 wrote:
> Thanks, Geert.
> 
> I decided to take the plunge. As I'm using Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04), I had
> to use GetDeb to get hold of version 2.4.7, but when I tried this I kept on
> being told that GnuCash had already been installed.
> 
> When I ran GnuCash I got the old version, but when I searched for GnuCash
> in the GetDeb section of the Ubuntu Software Centre, the version number at
> the bottom of the screen was 2.4.7.
> 
> It proved necessary to Remove and Install to get a working version of
> 2.4.7, and all appears well.
> 
> I asked about Budgets, but those that I've been working on weren't up to
> much, so I'll just start afresh in the new environment.
> 
> I'll have to work with 2.4.7 for a while before I can be sure nothing bad
> has happened to my accounts, but so far so good!.
> 
> I had expected some kind of conversion process in making the transition to
> the database back-end - it's probably time to read the documentation
> thoroughly...
> 
The conversion doesn't happen automatically. If you just open your existing 
data file with the new gnucash version, it will continue to use the original 
data format by default. Only if you decide to save your data in a different 
format (using the Save As menu item) the new format will be used.

A friendly word of advice though: if data integrity is your main concern and 
you don't have a strong reason to use the sql data format, stick with the 
original (xml) data format for now. It's been more thoroughly tested than the 
sql data formats. These new data formats work generally well, but there may 
still be some minor odd ends in rarely used work flows.

Geert