Thread: GNU Cash (lack of) support of Postgres
I ran accross the following in the preliminary FC5 release notes: The PostgreSQL backend for GnuCash has been removed, as it is unmaintained upstream, does not support the full set of GnuCashfeatures, and can lead to crashes. Users who use the PostgreSQL backend should load their data and save it as an XMLfile before upgrading GnuCash. This isn't the kind of thing that will help spur Postgres adoption. I don't use GNU Cash and so don't have much incentive to followup on this, but I thought there might be someone in the Advocacy group that might want to talk to the GNU Cash guys about this.
> This isn't the kind of thing that will help spur Postgres adoption. > I don't use GNU Cash and so don't have much incentive to followup on this, > but I thought there might be someone in the Advocacy group that might want > to talk to the GNU Cash guys about this. > Does anyone use GNU Cash? I have never ran into it in a commercial setting. Joshua D. Drake > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? > > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq > >
I wonder if this is just because of lack of demand for a GnuCash supported by a (non-file) database backend, or because of lack of developer interest in supporting/creating such an entity. This is one of the reasons that I recommend Quasar Accounting over GNUCash for small or medium businesses; GNUCash may be fine for personal use, but Quasar is much, much more feature complete, is proven in high-volume environments, uses Postgres (or Firebird or Sybase) and best of all is GPL. http://www.linuxcanada.com Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of negative perception created by GNUCash abandoning PG support, but I have to ask how much of a negative perception is created. For now I don't think it's an issue, but if, for instance, eWeek or someone else ran the story, then we might have to do some damage control. Thanks, -Josh
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > >This isn't the kind of thing that will help spur Postgres adoption. > >I don't use GNU Cash and so don't have much incentive to followup on this, > >but I thought there might be someone in the Advocacy group that might want > >to talk to the GNU Cash guys about this. > > > Does anyone use GNU Cash? I have never ran into it in a commercial setting. Rats :-( I do use Gnucash with a Postgres backend and it works great for me in the 1.8 branch. I was looking forward to using 2.0 :-( Is this that Fedora removed Postgres support from Gnucash, or the Gnucash guys removed it? -- Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.
On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 13:27:48 -0300, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > > > >This isn't the kind of thing that will help spur Postgres adoption. > > >I don't use GNU Cash and so don't have much incentive to followup on this, > > >but I thought there might be someone in the Advocacy group that might want > > >to talk to the GNU Cash guys about this. > > > > > Does anyone use GNU Cash? I have never ran into it in a commercial setting. > > Rats :-( I do use Gnucash with a Postgres backend and it works great > for me in the 1.8 branch. I was looking forward to using 2.0 :-( > > Is this that Fedora removed Postgres support from Gnucash, or the > Gnucash guys removed it? Fedora. But they are claiming a lack of upstream support. The comment was from the release notes wiki which cover the FC5 release (due out on the 15th).
On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 11:08:11AM -0500, Joshua Kramer wrote: > I wonder if this is just because of lack of demand for a GnuCash supported > by a (non-file) database backend, or because of lack of developer interest > in supporting/creating such an entity. > > This is one of the reasons that I recommend Quasar Accounting over GNUCash > for small or medium businesses; GNUCash may be fine for personal use, but > Quasar is much, much more feature complete, is proven in high-volume > environments, uses Postgres (or Firebird or Sybase) and best of all is > GPL. > > http://www.linuxcanada.com > > Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of negative perception created > by GNUCash abandoning PG support, but I have to ask how much of a negative > perception is created. For now I don't think it's an issue, but if, for > instance, eWeek or someone else ran the story, then we might have to do > some damage control. I think it's far more damaging at the developer level. The *only* reason MySQL is so popular is because it's the first thing most developers think of. Stuff like this doesn't help people feel good about moving to PostgreSQL. -- Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117 vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461
I should have included a URL in the first message. The comment was in: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/PackageNotes The wiki is the basis for the Fedora Core 5 release notes.
jnasby@pervasive.com ("Jim C. Nasby") writes:
> I think it's far more damaging at the developer level. The *only*
> reason MySQL is so popular is because it's the first thing most
> developers think of. Stuff like this doesn't help people feel good
> about moving to PostgreSQL.
MySQL wasn't on the list of likely databases.
Its use would, like PostgreSQL's use, mandate imposition of some DBA
activities on users, which is what they want to avoid.
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/unix.html
A VAX is virtually a computer, but not quite.
bruno@wolff.to (Bruno Wolff III) writes: > I ran accross the following in the preliminary FC5 release notes: > The PostgreSQL backend for GnuCash has been removed, as it is > unmaintained upstream, does not support the full set of GnuCash > features, and can lead to crashes. Users who use the PostgreSQL > backend should load their data and save it as an XML file before > upgrading GnuCash. > > This isn't the kind of thing that will help spur Postgres adoption. > I don't use GNU Cash and so don't have much incentive to followup on > this, but I thought there might be someone in the Advocacy group > that might want to talk to the GNU Cash guys about this. I used to be involved with the project; haven't had time in quite a while, which prevents me from being terribly influential about the matter. What they are thinking of doing is to adopt SQLite <http://www.sqlite.org/> as a storage system. Basically, they're NOT interested in pushing any burden of database administration on users, which means they aren't keen on: a) Requiring particular additional packages to be installed (there is no lack of dependancies already) b) Requiring management of pg_hba.conf The users *they're* keen on getting are ones that want to get something to replace Quicken, to whom configuring a DBMS would seem like overkill. By the same token, they immediately *lose* several things, by ruling out PostgreSQL in favor of pretty well anything else... - PostgreSQL has Good Numeric Types for Money, and very robust data types in general - Stored procs could be very helpful for balance analysis - There are places where they could *really* use triggers But the two big reasons are ones they are evidently allowing to override things. Forcing PostgreSQL on people would be something of a non-starter, thereby making the would-be benefits pretty irrelevant, and when they are having a fairly tough time time with the existing burden of code (which they need to port to GNOME 2, for instance), adding effort, with no actual benefit (because they can't trust the database with types, procs, or triggers since they won't use it universally). -- let name="cbbrowne" and tld="acm.org" in name ^ "@" ^ tld;; http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/nonrdbms.html "Those who doubt the importance of a convenient notation should try writing a LISP interpreter in COBOL or doing long division with Roman numerals." -- Hal Fulton
On Mar 7, 2006, at 4:30 PM, Chris Browne wrote: > I used to be involved with the project; haven't had time in quite a > while, which prevents me from being terribly influential about the > matter. > > What they are thinking of doing is to adopt SQLite > <http://www.sqlite.org/> as a storage system. > > Basically, they're NOT interested in pushing any burden of database > administration on users, which means they aren't keen on: > > a) Requiring particular additional packages to be installed > > (there is no lack of dependancies already) > > b) Requiring management of pg_hba.conf > > The users *they're* keen on getting are ones that want to get > something to replace Quicken, to whom configuring a DBMS would > seem like overkill. > > By the same token, they immediately *lose* several things, by ruling > out PostgreSQL in favor of pretty well anything else... > > - PostgreSQL has Good Numeric Types for Money, and very robust > data types in general > - Stored procs could be very helpful for balance analysis > - There are places where they could *really* use triggers Doesn't SQLite support most of that? Hopefully they'll at least keep things well architected so that it's fairly easy to port to PostgreSQL should someone want to do that in the future. But the way things are setup right now (ie: not using transactions very well), there wouldn't be much benefit to using PostgreSQL anyway... > But the two big reasons are ones they are evidently allowing to > override things. > > Forcing PostgreSQL on people would be something of a non-starter, > thereby making the would-be benefits pretty irrelevant, and when they > are having a fairly tough time time with the existing burden of code > (which they need to port to GNOME 2, for instance), adding effort, > with no actual benefit (because they can't trust the database with > types, procs, or triggers since they won't use it universally). -- Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117 vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461
After a long battle with technology, jnasby@pervasive.com (Jim Nasby), an earthling, wrote: > On Mar 7, 2006, at 4:30 PM, Chris Browne wrote: >> I used to be involved with the project; haven't had time in quite a >> while, which prevents me from being terribly influential about the >> matter. >> >> What they are thinking of doing is to adopt SQLite >> <http://www.sqlite.org/> as a storage system. >> >> Basically, they're NOT interested in pushing any burden of database >> administration on users, which means they aren't keen on: >> >> a) Requiring particular additional packages to be installed >> >> (there is no lack of dependancies already) >> >> b) Requiring management of pg_hba.conf >> >> The users *they're* keen on getting are ones that want to get >> something to replace Quicken, to whom configuring a DBMS would >> seem like overkill. >> >> By the same token, they immediately *lose* several things, by ruling >> out PostgreSQL in favor of pretty well anything else... >> >> - PostgreSQL has Good Numeric Types for Money, and very robust >> data types in general >> - Stored procs could be very helpful for balance analysis >> - There are places where they could *really* use triggers > > Doesn't SQLite support most of that? No. - SQLite stores values as ASCII text. Extremely weakly typed; parallel to Tcl, Perl, where "everything is a string." - No, it has no notion of stored procs - Well, I guess it does have triggers. > Hopefully they'll at least keep things well architected so that it's > fairly easy to port to PostgreSQL should someone want to do that in > the future. But the way things are setup right now (ie: not using > transactions very well), there wouldn't be much benefit to using > PostgreSQL anyway... I'd call that "not sure." SQLite supports a notion of transactions. I'm not sure to what degree things can get rolled back. At any rate, if they design GnuCash to use SQLite well (e.g. - harnessing its strengths), it will likely be nontrivial to port it to anything else. -- select 'cbbrowne' || '@' || 'gmail.com'; http://linuxdatabases.info/info/slony.html Stop the world! I want to get off!!
Chris, > At any rate, if they design GnuCash to use SQLite well (e.g. - > harnessing its strengths), it will likely be nontrivial to port it to > anything else. I'd also point out that Richard is a big fan of PostgreSQL and porting between SQLite and Postgres is relatively easy as a consequence. -- Josh Berkus Aglio Database Solutions San Francisco
Joshua Kramer wrote: >I wonder if this is just because of lack of demand for a GnuCash supported >by a (non-file) database backend, or because of lack of developer interest >in supporting/creating such an entity. > >This is one of the reasons that I recommend Quasar Accounting over GNUCash >for small or medium businesses; GNUCash may be fine for personal use, but >Quasar is much, much more feature complete, is proven in high-volume >environments, uses Postgres (or Firebird or Sybase) and best of all is >GPL. > > > SQL-Ledger is another accounting software project that is released under the GPL and supports (exclusively at the moment) PostgreSQL. It is most definitely not suitable for the personal finance software market, but for businesses, I have been exceptionally happy with it. The company that maintains it is also based in Canada... Also, since the entire app is written in Perl, it is fairly easy to modify the workflow/data entry screens/reports etc. to meet your needs. It is a web based application which has some pros and cons, but it is worth knowing about. >http://www.linuxcanada.com > >Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of negative perception created >by GNUCash abandoning PG support, but I have to ask how much of a negative >perception is created. For now I don't think it's an issue, but if, for >instance, eWeek or someone else ran the story, then we might have to do >some damage control. > > Well, my approach would be: How much does PostgreSQL support buy you in the personal finance market? And for businesses, there are better options anyway. Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting