Underlying database? [LWN.net]

Underlying database?

Posted Jan 5, 2009 18:08 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
In reply to: Underlying database? by endecotp
Parent article: 6 best personal finance apps for Linux (TechRadar)

Having a generic database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL as the data back-end to a personal finance back-end might imply read-write access to the user's (often sensitive) data and information.

Of course, the open-source applications' data stores are essentially read-write also, given that the user is an uber-hacker and has a hex editor (assuming that these finance apps store their data in binary or ASCII flat files).

My guess is that the data stores are obfuscated just enough (i.e., no generic database format) to protect the data from the owner (Enron accounting, anyone?) and the owner from him/herself (one misplaced decimal point could cost thousands), and the developers presume that the owner is responsible for protecting his/her data from others (disks, USB thumb drives, etc.).

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Underlying database?

Posted Jan 5, 2009 18:16 UTC (Mon) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]

The on disk format is a zipped xml file.

The major PITA I have with GnuCash is
that there is zero export ability
from inside the project.

macc

Underlying database?

Posted Jan 5, 2009 19:43 UTC (Mon) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]

Yes, and I couldn't get the reports to do what I wanted, so I wrote this Perl program to summarise the data in these XML files created by Gnucash.

Underlying database?

Posted Jan 5, 2009 20:31 UTC (Mon) by macc (subscriber, #510) [Link]

hey, thanks, Ile try that.

Imho using guile for scripting was one of the bigger mistakes.
There is a reason most heavily used scriptable nonprogrammer
tools (EDA) use tcl for scripting.

Having a mix of gnc:* gnc-* functions due to changing
the wrapper tools (partly) and no usable doc to speak off
makes it rather untractable to develop/adapt for.

MACC

Underlying database?

Posted Jan 5, 2009 20:35 UTC (Mon) by lolando (subscriber, #7139) [Link]

I'll second that. I too would prefer a PostgreSQL backend, but in its absence I wrote a Perl script too. It nicely turns my Gnucash file into a report (using Docbook) that matches the peculiar format expected by the French fiscal administration for my accounting. And the hard part wasn't the XML parsing...