gnucash slowing as file size increases

[Tommy Trussell]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Philip Matthaei <pmathi60 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am presently using gnucash and I think it's the best!  I have been using
> it for 3 years on the Windows 7 OS.  Lately since the file size got to
> 1,000 kb it takes quite a while to load.  The program still works fine
> without any problems.  Is there anything I should be concerned about?  What
> is the Database the Windows installation is using?
>

At some point awhile back, the GnuCash developers added an integrity check
to the file loading process, which ensures the data file has not been
corrupted by a software bug. Unfortunately it has the side effect of making
hte file load slower, especially when it's large and (I hear) when running
on Windows.

The "ordinary" file format (if you have not specifically saved it to
another type of file) is compressed XML, roughly equivalent to some
Microsoft Office formats, and all LibreOffice or OpenOffice files. (Not
that those programs can directly open GnuCash files, but they store the
files in a similar fashion, and you might discover that it takes them a
similar amount of time to open a similarly-sized data file.)

GnuCash allows you to save the data in the Sqlite3 database format, which
many people use, although it's still considered slightly experimental. I
don't know whether it opens faster under Windows, but you can try the
Sqlite3 database format using

File --> Save As...

and choosing Sqlite3 from the option selector on that dialog.

Note that if you save to a different file, the next time you launch GnuCash
from the Windows Start menu (or whatever application launcher you use) it
will automatically open whichever file you had open last. So be sure to
notice where your current data is stored.


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