On Thu, 11 May 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> It's been rumoured that Gerald Champagne said:
> > Can someone please explain why it would be worth adding the
> > complexity of an external database program?
> -- gotta have external db (probably sql) to allow multi-user use.
A file system is an "external database". However, it's much easier to
do "multi-user" in a DBMS.
> -- sql could make integration with things like online shopping carts
> easier ...
Actually, the importation of data from online anything .... even if you don't
share the data directly, the "import routine" might be reduced to a single
SQL transaction.
> -- gnucash has increasing needs to store more & more data in some form
> or another, e.g. budgeting info, or user preferences. The idea is
> that maybe we should solve the generic storage problem now with some
> generic tools, rather than continually patching.
Patching will continue to happen. There is always a new feature ....
> moving to sql *might* eliminate some of the scariness of patching
> and adding new extensions and features. Maybe. I'm not so sure of
> that any more ...
I think that is generally true. Similar results can be obtained by using
multiple files to store the data. In general, you gain by having some
mechanism to partition the data so that a change in one part of the data does
not affect the storage of all the data.
>
If carried to the extreme, each action becomes a database "query" rather than
a "program" that processes the data records. Particularly as the database
grows larger, the DBMS can perform the action more efficiently because it can
utilize techniques such as indexes that would add quite a bit of complexity
to the "program".
