[ale] [Way OT] GnuCash (Was: Re: GnuCash (Was: Re: [OT] Home PBX?))

[mike at trausch.us]

On 08/02/2012 10:54 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> "mike at trausch.us" <mike at trausch.us> writes:
> 
>> On 08/01/2012 12:06 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>>> Patches are always welcome!  :)
>>
>> Of course!
>>
>> That said, given your description, the only reasonable method I could
>> see would be to support _only_ PostgreSQL, since that has a
>> notifications mechanism that could support the invalidation of GC's
>> internal cache.  As far as I'm aware, no other database system provides
>> such a mechanism (other than perhaps Oracle).  It would also require
>> that GC's database driver listen for notifies.
> 
> Not necessarily.  You could also implement it as a lazy evaluation.  You
> don't need the client to update in real time, the client can just do a
> data check and refresh when it needs to, and just verify that the data
> is still current before allowing the user to edit.

Polling would work, yes.  It wouldn't be the most efficient system ever,
but it would work.

> For example, when calling xaccTransBeginEdit() to begin editing a
> transaction it could theoretically:
> 
> 1) check to make sure the txn is current, and
> 2) lock the transaction in the database
> 

I'd probably just wrap it in BEGIN TRANSACTION; ... COMMIT; so that it
all happens as a single atomic transaction.

Full disclaimer:  I only use DB systems that support atomic transactions
as a given, not those that support atomic transactions as an add-on,
optional feature of a particular set of table type(s).  :-P

>> What I have been doing is, for now, using GC as our authoritative set of
>> books, entering data based on events that happen.  Where I would like to
>> wind up is with a single system (or a single integrated system of
>> systems) that does the same thing, but with the effect of lightening my
>> administrative overhead and gaining the capability of delegation.  I
>> could technically delegate to a bookkeeper, but I haven't the budget for
>> one at the moment.  CPAs, when I need them, tend to break any budget
>> that might exist for a regular bookkeeper.  :-)
> 
> But you don't trust multiple people to have full access to your books?
> You CAN have multiple people entering data.  Just not simultaneously.

It's not about trust, not at all.  It's more the fact that the system
scares people.  I think it's the fact that it is an accounting system
more than anything else.  Personally, I have found GC to be a very nice,
easy to use system compared to other things that I have tried to use in
the past.  It's a pleasure.

But for others, they want and/or need something that simply doesn't show
them the low-level details.  Instead, they just want to see what they
need to see to get the data input and the job done.

I have one person that is fully comfortable with GC, used it to manage
his personal finances.  (He doesn't anymore, but that's because he
didn't backup the GC data file and the computer was stolen...)  He would
be able to use the system, save for the fact that he currently doesn't
have a connection to the network it is running on.  In a worst-case
scenario where he needed to take things over, he could through an SSH
tunnel to get to the database server, though.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

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