Data file too large

[John Ralls]

On Jul 6, 2014, at 2:14 PM, Ian K <ik522000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> In reality there is no way apart from all or nothing. I have been pondering
> this issue for some time, and really would like some kind of archiving
> function to delete old transactions, but this is not something the
> developers are keen on.
> I haven't done this yet, but my approach will be to start again with a new
> file.
> So File > Export > Export Accounts will create a new file will all existing
> accounts set up but empty.
> The run a Balance Sheet on all accounts at a certain date and manually
> create Opening Balance transactions on every account.
> I have about 250 accounts, but about 40 of them are closed so can be
> deleted.
> 
> Not ideal as I won't be able to run reports over the time period that spans
> both files, but I can't think of any other way...

No one's keen on doing it because it's hard to do right. Ordinary income and expenses are easy enough, but capital expenditures usually need to be carried until they're disposed of, and they might have income or expenses that need to be tracked for the life of the investment or other asset. Automagically separating the two categories is very difficult.

Our long-term plan to resolve the startup time issue is to move to a database architecture where we don't load the whole thing, only those splits which are currently displayed in a register window. The core code needs a lot of work before that becomes feasible, though, so it's likely another 5 or 6 years before we'll be ready to release that.

Regards,
John Ralls