[GNC] My experience importing 19 years of Quicken data into GnuCash

[GWB]

Haven't tested this with the SQLite GnuCash backend, but it is
sometimes possible with PostgreSQL to "roll back" to an earlier state
before the last transactions, or for that matter, any arbitrary number
of transactions before the last one.  I haven't used the PostgreSQL
backend with GnuCash for some time now, since the SQLite format works
extremely well.  But having multiple formats (xml files and sql
databases) was one reason I moved from various other finance programs
(which shall not be named).  SQL Ledger is a financial server-client
model that allows this.

Unless you are willing to spend some time learning various sql query
and dbase commands and functions, I would stick with SQLite and make
snapshots (if your file system allows it) or frequent backups.  And
there is still nothing wrong with the .xml file format that I can see.
I would not suggest the developers try to incorporate some kind of
multiple "undo" within the GnuCash menu (there is already a "replay"
feature, I think, with the .xml file), unless they have lots of spare
time (also not likely!).  But maybe if someone has already had some
success with "rolling back" the SQLite gnucash file to an earlier
state (using command line sql functions and commands?) they could put
it on the wiki.

Keeping changes in memory until commit ("save") works great on most
machines (i.e., the xml file format).  I worry about core dumps and
crashes on linux (less so FreeBSD) so I like various types of sql
backends, but my guess is that most Windows and Mac users (the
majority of gnucash users?) are only rarely affected by crashes.

Gordon

On Sat, Apr 6, 2019 at 1:20 PM Cricket Onebit
<cricketbeautiful at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That makes sense.
>
> I know with some versions of SQL, you can roll-back. I suspect that each of
> the three versions GNUCash supports does it differently, sigh. If I do use
> SQL, I'll treat it like my novel. Dated daily backups, and add good title
> and change log when I make major changes. Not that I ever regret major
> changes.
>
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> On Tue, 2 Apr 2019 at 15:23, no_more_quicken <nospam at peterskim.com> wrote:
>
> > Cricket Onebit wrote
> > > Can you explain more about not being able to undo things with the SQL
> > > backend vs XML (or point to more details)? I'm undecided about which
> > > backend. Fully-functional and easy to install and maintain is more
> > > important to me than a few seconds while using, unless those seconds add
> > > up
> > > quickly. I want to do my accounting, not trouble-shoot the installation.
> >
> > With the XML backend, any modifications are kept in memory until you
> > explicitly save the changes.  (You can also setup GnuCash to auto-save at
> > set intervals.) So if you make a major/destructive goof while editing
> > transactions, you can always just not save and get back to your last saved
> > state.  With a SQL backend, modifications are committed immediately to the
> > database, so there is no way to go back.  That said, converting from one
> > format to another is trivially easy and doable at any time, so it's not
> > necessarily a big decision you have to make a priori.
> >
> >
> >
> >
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