Gnucash versions

David Ryder dnryder at btinternet.com
Fri Oct 7 06:37:44 EDT 2011



On 07/10/11 09:22, Geert Janssens wrote:
> On vrijdag 7 oktober 2011, David Ryder wrote:
>> On 06/10/11 15:09, John Ralls wrote:
>>> On Oct 6, 2011, at 5:27 AM, David Ryder wrote:
>>>> Thanks for this insight.
>>>>
>>>> Does this mean that if we don't convert to sql but stay in XML format,
>>>> our books are interchangeable with 2.2.9-5? If so, it gives us newbies
>>>> a 'backup' if we have 2.2.9-5 on another machine.
>>>>
>>>> David
>>>>
>>>> On 06/10/11 09:25, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
>>>>> I'll just note that unless you explicitly installed the lib-dbi backend
>>>>> for a supported database package (mysql, sqlite, postgresql), created
>>>>> a database in the database engine, and then saved your gnucash data in
>>>>> the database format, then you are probably still using the default XML
>>>>> data format. And that is probably just as well. At this time, there is
>>>>> little gained by converting over to the SQL version; several
>>>>> discussions over the last year or so have underscored this.
>>> When you reply to a message in a digest, please change the subject line
>>> to match the one from the particular message you're responding to.
>>>
>>> Yes, that's correct: The XML files interoperate with Gnucash-2.2.9.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> John Ralls
>> Apologies for the subject error.
>>
>> Thank you for the lib-dbi info.
>> My (original) question then is extended to, what are the benefits of
>> converting to a sql database?
> Using an sql database means that all your edits are immediately saved,
> resulting in a reduced risk of data loss. That is currently the only benefit.
>
> The sql data storage of GnuCash currently isn't a clean relational database
> (yet) and won't increase performance yet either. Those may change in the
> future. What we have now is a first step that paves the way to much stronger
> database support in later releases.
>
> Geert
>
Thank you.
Immediately saving edits can have drawbacks, for example when trying to 
reconcile a 'messy' account. I have found it often better to d edits 
without saving until I know they are correct. JMO
Hopefully, acknowledging with much appreciation, the effort of the 
volunteers, one day gnucash can have a proper share portfolio manager in 
it (like Australia's STEX) - the present way of keeping track of shares 
in gnucash is, no dis-respect intended, too cumbersome and limited.

Off-topic (?) The instructions I had for installing gnucash 2.4.7 on 
Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 made no mention of lib-dbi.

David


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