Learning, need clarification

[Buddha Buck]

On Fri Feb 13 2015 at 3:19:54 AM David <chrstdvd at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ref:
> http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-could-not-
> obtain-the-lock-file-td4675956.html
>
> I wanted to reply or ask a question concerning the above thread, but since
> I
> am squeaky new here I thought I should start my own thread.
>
> Later on before posting this I went back to help and typed in Backup and
> Restore into search box and got one hit.  But I do not think it says
> exactly
> what the first article said, because I can not find the sentence that talks
> about before and after a version what format the database file is written
> in
> in that topic.
>
> 1.  Is the database used by Gnu built into the program?
>

Yes, maybe, depending on what platform you are running, I think?

GnuCash runs on many platforms, each of which may have it's own conventions
for what gets installed and what doesn't. I believe GnuCash uses Postgresql
or MySql, both of which ship with standard Linux distributions, but not
with Windows. I do not know if the GnuCash installer for Windows ships with
the database engine.

2.  Am I using a Sql database?
>

Probably not. With the current release, the SQL backend is not considered
reliable enough -- not that the SQL database will crash and lose data, but
in that the developers aren't sure they have successfully caught all the
areas where consistency checks and the like need to be made. They think
they have, but they are conservatively cautious.

As such, the default is to not use the SQL back end.


> 3.  If so, How?  If not, what am I using?
>

When you first started GnuCash, it asked you in one of those questions you
probably didn't know what meant: what back end did you want to use? XML was
the default.

You are most likely using the XML backend.

The "XYZ.gnucash" file that it generates is a compressed XML file. You can
use a decompression utility (I'm not sure of the appropriate one on
Windows) to decompress it and look at the raw XML if you wish.

4.  In Quicken you can backup your data file to external drive. A few
> moments ago I opened my Gnu folder, copied the largest file to my desk top,
> opened it to verify it is the correct most current file.  Then I deleted
> the
> 147 files in my Documents > Gnucash > DavidAnn file.  Then I cut the file
> off desktop and pasted it back into the now empty folder, verified it
> worked
> and was correct, closed it down and then copied it onto a thumb drive and
> my
> external hard drove in appropriate folder.
>
> Is there an easier way to back up a data file to external drive?
>

I would have just copied the data file, and not bothered with moving it to
the desktop, deleting all the backups/logs, etc.

What you are seeing in the 148 files in that directory are:

One file named "DavidAnn.gnucash"
A slew of files named "DavidAnn.gnucash.2014092825408.gnucash" or similar
A slew of files named "DavidAnn.gnucash.2014092825909.log" or similar

The short file name is your actual data file. The long file names ending in
".gnucash" are timestamped backups. The number is the timestamp, and
reflects the year, month, day, and second the backup was automatically
made. The long files ending in ".log" are a record of transactions posted
since the previous log file. It is not intended for day-to-day usage.

While it is probably the case that the actual data file is larger than the
backups, it is not guaranteed: it may have more transactions, but compress
better, for instance. As such, look for the timestamp-less file name to
back up.

It's possible that you don't have a "DavidAnn.gnucash", but have (now) a
bunch of "DavidAnn.gnucash.2015010524312.gnucash.2015020452314.gnucash"
files, meaning that you opened and used a previous backup, and gnucash is
making more backups of changes you've made to that. So it's appended
another timestamp to the filename. This is probably not what you want.



> Thank you for reading and offering advice.
>
>
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