Repost (or Mike fights with Lotus Notes, grrr) Re: gui & database

[mike_phillips urscorp com]

>Could you explain in 25 words or less what PostgresSQL is?  Is this
>some sort of complicated database engine?  Does it run standalone or
>will users need some sort of network connection to use it?  Will it
>use a lot of disk space?  Will we still be able to port fplan to
palmtops?

PostgresSQL is a fully featured SQL database engine. My intentions are to 
keep support for the existing flat file format and just make it easy to 
add support for other databases. 

Postgres can be used across a network, but its not required, I have the 
postgres server on my laptop and the C api connects directly to it. What's 
really nice is that once the data is in a standard SQL database, many 
different toolsets can be used to access the data, included adding a web 
interface. 

A lot more people know SQL as well, making it easier in the future for 
someone to write a conversion tool to add/update the information. All I'll 
have to do to fully support this is write a SQL->flat file conversion 
utility. 

Porting to palmtops will still be totally doable, the compile for them 
will simply use the standard flat file system. It should be possible to 
use a database engine specifically written for the palmtops as well (if 
there is a lite version, similarly to flgtk (I think) implementation of 
gtk).

What may upset the palmtop implementation is new features that are added 
that require additional database files (airplane information, weather, 
etc, etc.) 

To handle this situation my thought is to have a minimum requirement for 
the data (basically as is) and then set it up so that the application 
doesn't fall over and die if the other data files are not available, 
simply telling the user those files are not installed. 

Mike