[GNC] Editing, moving customer lists, possible child lists

[David Cousens]

Johnathon,

It is possible to host the data files but not the application on a cloud
data storage. I use a dropbox so I can edit my files either at home, on my
laptop when I am mobile or away etc.  I have also used Google Drive for the
same purpose In that case it is synchronised from the local machine I am
editing on to the dropbox server and that is not instantaneous. GnuCash's
customer data storage is not a general client information system and stores
little more than the name, some contact details and a billing and shipping
address. It is not as comprehensive as an ERP system for example. 

One reason some people use the database backends for GnuCash is so they can
access the GnuCash data from other applications using SQL queries. GnuCash
also has bindings to a Python API which can be used to access the data. It
is strictly an accounting system by design and as it is used in many
countries there tends to be an emphasis on generic accounting features
rather than being customized to a particular jurisdiction within the
program. Any specific customization would have to be external. 

I would be inclined to keep clinical patient data in a separate system
designed for that function e.g.
https://www.openclinica.com/community-edition-open-source-edc/, 
https://openmrs.org/ and try to build or have someone develop a linking
system to the accounting functionality. Other possible options are listed in
https://blog.capterra.com/top-7-free-open-source-emr-software-products/.  If
they are database based it will depend largely on how much information is
available on the database structure and how to access it as to how difficult
that may be to achieve. This unfortunately is what you pay for in commercial
products although they don't always deliver.

The development and documentation teams for GnuCash are totally totally
volunteer. New features are implemented, but usually after a fair bit of
discussion and generally rely on one of the team members being interested in
the feature or a significant demand from the user base. The main development
effort is focussed on bug fixes and modernization of the code to stay up
with libraries GnuCash is dependent upon.

The critical thing with flexible access to data is database design to
increase the ways in which data can be accessed. It is a highly specialized
field in and of itself to optimally design a database for such a function. I
don't know enough about the systems I referenced above to know whether thay
are capable of meeting your needs.  

You will probably want to seriously look at the costs of customization of
software. It can be quite expensive and difficult depending on how good the
developer documentation is and the capabilities of any developer you would
hire.

Can't really comment on database courses. There is plenty of online
material. I haven't had any experience with FileMaker as a relational dBMS.
MySQL, PostGRES, SQLite3 are largely ecosystem (Windows, MacOS) independent 
 and available for most major OS's around however Access and Filemaker may
tie you to either the Windows or MacOS environments respectively. These
questions are really out of scope for the GnuCash forum however.
StackExchange and Tecmint may be more useful for more general info  (among
many others)

David




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David Cousens
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