[GNC] Moving from Sage Accounting and would like to keep sub-account totals viewable

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 25, 2019, at 11:21 AM, Stephen M. Butler <kg7je at arrl.net> wrote:
> 
> On 11/25/19 7:16 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Hi David,
>> 
>> David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>>> Derek,
>>> 
>>> If what you call a rolling balance is what I call a running balance,  then I
>>> think that the account register view will show that when it is sorted in
>>> chronological order.  In fact, as others have already noted, you can see that
>>> in your top level accounts.  Where you won't see it is in mixed commodity/
>>> mixed currency cases such as stock brokerage accounts or other mixed currency
>>> accounts. For those cases it is necessary to use a report that can evaluate
>>> appropriate exchange rates. 
>> Yes, rolling/running balance.  However, while there is a balance column
>> being displayed, it might not show the *correct* balance because each
>> split shown has a precomputed balance for the actual account it is tied
>> to.  This balance is recomputed whenever a split in the account is
>> modified.  However, it is NOT computed in real-time for display.
>> 
>> So when you do a "Open Subaccounts" view, it is not recomputing the
>> balance including everything, but rather it is still showing the
>> pre-computed balance of the split's account balance for that split.
>> 
>> It *MAY* look correct at some points in time, but in general, no, it is
>> not.
>> 
>>> David Carlson 
>> -derek
>> 
> 
> I understand the legacy reasons for doing this, but as a corporate DBA
> (Oracle), I find this troubling.  Running balances should never be
> stored!  Again, I understand why legacy systems do this but we now have
> enough horsepower in the CPU and back-end database systems to alleviate
> the need.  Hopefully as GnC is migrated to a multi-user database
> back-end system, this will be redesigned.
> 

Yes it will. In the meantime there is no backend system and computing balances requires traversing a linked list of all splits in the account, a fairly expensive operation even with fast hardware--and the code isn't smart enough to do it for sub-accounts.

Regards,
John Ralls