Re: [gnome-db] database integration for GNOME 2.12

[Vivien Malerba <vmalerba gmail com>]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 17:04:46 +0100, Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 13:59 +0100, Vivien Malerba wrote:
> > On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 11:48:57 +0100, Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> wrote:
> > > Hi
> > >
> > > Some time ago I was asked what plans I had for GNOME 2.x, and I asked
> > > 'database integration'. So, now, in the roadmap for GNOME 2.12
> > > (http://live.gnome.org/RoadMap), as it was in previous roadmaps, there
> > > is that item.
> > >
> > > So, I'm asking here for ideas on how we could better integrate databases
> > > into the GNOME desktop. So far, some (crazy) ideas:
> > >
> > > * create a db-filesystem, like the WinFS thing on longhorn. That would
> > > be a gnome-vfs module that offers a category-based filesystem for
> > > gnome-vfs-based applications. Thus, users could use a database file
> > > (SQLite) or a big database (for saving files from many applications)
> > >
> >
> > Good idea. The problem is that databases usually don't like to store
> > big binary files for performances reasons... Also How would it be
> > integrated with things like Beagle or Storage (I've never tried any,
> > though)?
> >
> not sure if they would use gnome-vfs directly to search (which I think
> beagle does) or we would have to write a module for beagle to search in
> databases.
> 
> Which is, indeed another idea, to write a module for Beagle to let it
> search in databases via libgda. There is some documentation about this
> here: http://beaglewiki.org/

At least there could be a module for Beagle to index in a database
through libgda (they use sqlite for now), so one could set up a
Postgres, MySQL or whatever database if they prefer.

Indexing a database needs some more thoughts, but it could be usefull
under some circumnstances.

> 
> > > * have mergeant finished and include it as part of the GNOME desktop
> > >
> >
> > Mergeant is quite useable and in my point of view the missing features are:
> > -> database creation
> > -> database structure creation and modifications
> > -> reports generation.
> >
> great, we could try to get 1.0 out at the same time as GNOME 2.12?

It is doable, but I don't have much time right now... Anyway I think
mergeant's code is very easy to understand so the learning curve is
rather low to start. I'll concentrate on making libgnomedb real solid
first.

> 
> > Quite some time ago someone proposed to create a Nautilus view to
> > manage data sources, like there is for fonts:// for example. I ithink
> > that would be nice. At the time it was objected that the data sources
> > were not files and so Nautilus had nothing to do with them...
> >
> that is not a good idea, given that nautilus hackers don't like those
> kind of views

Ok, forget about the idea!

Cheers,

Vivien