GNU cash slow to load

[John Ralls]

On Mar 31, 2013, at 10:40 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On 31 Mar 2013, at 11:40, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8 at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 03/30/2013 06:15 PM, Liz wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> As some have hinted, the size of the data file is part of the problem
>>> of "slow loading" as the entire data file has to be loaded at startup.
>>> My biggest datafile is 547Kb compressed, and probably uncompresses to
>>> the 8Mb mark. It has data from 1995.
>>> It loads in 12 seconds on a computer I've had for some years, but I
>>> have put an SSD in it for my OS (Debian unstable).
>>> This speeds up all program loading and is a relatively simple option,
>>> cheaper than the new computer.
>> 
>> I run two instances of GnuCash, one under one user and one under
>> another. They both take quite a while to "load." In my case, it is "my
>> own fault." I leave several reports open in each. So the program loads
>> fairly quickly, but then it has to calculate the reports before I get to
>> use the program. My machine has a 4-core Intel Xeon processor. The worst
>> report is the one that computes Income/Expense chart report.
>> 
>> This is not a complaint requesting that the report be generated more
>> quickly. As I said, it is my own fault.
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> 
> If the time taken to open GnuCash is a problem to you, I wonder if a switch to the database version would help?
> 
> My understanding (which is not informed by any knowledge of the code) is that, by default, GnuCash uses an XML file to store all of your transactions etc. This file has to be opened and read in its entirety when GnuCash is started. I would expect a database version to start up more quickly - I have not done the experiment and this may be untrue, and there may also be good reasons for not using the database version. 

Sorry, no, it doesn't work that way. If anything the XML file loads more quickly than a database: Querying the database adds a lot of overhead compared to parsing the XML
file into a DOM tree, and we load the whole thing at startup in both cases.

The sole performance advantage of the database backend is that everything is written out as it changes, so there's no need to save when you quit Gnucash.

Regards,
John Ralls