Gnucash versions

[Geert Janssens]

On vrijdag 7 oktober 2011, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> Colin Scott wrote:
> > There is one potential benefit of using a SQL store over an XML one
> > that they probably won't tell you - you can read the data using tools
> > other than gnucash! 
Technically there is no difference here between the SQL storage over the XML 
one. There are also xml parsers to extract data from an xml file. Try to open 
your (uncompressed) data file with firefox for example. The xml data format 
may not really make a lot of sense to someone who is more accustomed to sql 
tables, but someone proficient with xml and xslt can easily whip up the same 
reports you are dreaming of creating with SQL. So this is not a particular 
benefit in itself and that's one reason it specifically mentioned as such. 
Which data format is preferred is merely based on prior knowledge.

> > This means that you can potentially generate
> > reports based on gnucash data without having to resort to the horrors
> > of the gnucash reporting system.  (I don't know if anyone is doing
> > this yet, because the schema used by gnucash is pretty messy, but the
> > potential is there, and I know that some people, myself included, are
> > working on it!
> 
> I have high hopes for using SQL for doing custom reports, because I know
> SQL and have used it (or something like it) for a couple of decades. I
> do not have a version of gnucash that supports it at the moment, but I
> understand that the data now stored is not in a suitable normalized form
> for the user to do custom reports any easier than the older gnucash
> formats. So I choose to wait. This is not a complaint. If Red Hat were
> to include such a version today, I would not switch over for quite a while.

And that is the main reason why this isn't promoted (yet). Part of the 
required information to do custom reporting in encapsulated in the business 
logic in GnuCash. Or said differently, some values are calculated, not stored. 
Within restrictions, you can probably generate *some* reports, but you will 
not find all reportable data in the database.

Geert