Using an externally hosted postGreSQL as a gnu cash backend?

[Michael Wagner]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 6:12 PM, Russell Mercer <rmercer206 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Mike,
>
> I think there are a couple of things at play here.
>
> 1.  Using a database backend as opposed to the .xml file:  There are noted
> issues with data consistency when using any backend storage aside from the
> .xml.  The issues may not be major, and may only apply in certain areas
> like business functions, but that has not been quantified.  In short, there
> are known data integrity issues, but their scope and severity are not known
> as they pertain to any or all database backends.  That is one primary
> reason other people on the list have recommended against using it.
>

Is there a nickel tour of the data consistency issues? I did a quick web
search and didn't find anything.


>
> 2.  Postgres data integrity, ACID support, etc.  I use Postgres on a daily
> basis for my work, so I completely understand and agree that it is a
> stellar RDBMS.  I do not, however, use it for Gnucash.  The primary reason,
> is as mentioned in item 1.  There are unresolved data integrity issues.
> The secondary reason is that at this time, Gnucash has not been modified to
> take advantage of any database functionality.  To your example, a partial
> transaction could not happen in Gnucash, but for a different reason..  A
> transaction between accounts in Gnucash does not involve a transaction
> between 2 tables in Postgres.  This is because the data is essentially
> stored in a flat file in Postgres.  It is loaded completely into memory and
> all operations are done in memory with the results written back to the
> database.
> So, yes, while in theory, the RDBMS functionality of Postgres should
> provide far superior data protection than the .xml file, in practice, it is
> no better.
>

Sorry, I hope my explanation wasn't too tedious.

So gnucash doesn't update the PostGres DB using transaction semantics?
That's interesting - not doubting you, that just seems odd.


>
> Hope this helps,
> Russell
>

Thanks,

Mike

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