Re: GNOME DB's (Re: dbus and GNOME 2.8)

[Vladimir Vukicevic <vladimir pobox com>]

Bob Smith wrote:

> A few comments on the DB topic.
>
> 1. It was commented that a DB's too heavy for things like egg-recent.
> Alone, that might be true. But how many places could a database come in
> handy? If used all over, it could provide great features, polish, and
> speed up development time.

I agree; I think the question is how much of a RDBMS does the desktop 
need.  Specifically, stored procedures are the main incompatible 
sticking point between different databases; things like triggers and 
notifications can (hopefully) be abstracted away by gnome-db.

What things would people like to do with a desktop database?  If the 
goal is to move all the current apps' private databases into a global 
desktop database, the requirements on the database itself are going to 
be quite different than if it's just used for small bits of data (like 
recently opened files).  For example, does rhythmbox start storing its 
music collection information in the database with a common format that 
muine can use as well?  Do you start putting, say, selected EXIF image 
data into the database, that fSpot, Nautilus, the file-open dialog box, 
etc. can all reference?  Does Evolution start storing address, email, 
and todo items in the database?  Or is it only for "small" things, like 
recently-used data, and maybe bookmarks?

As far as the abstraction layer goes, it seems that Storage would be the 
natural interface for applications that wish to access the desktop 
database -- not gnome-db.  Thus, the burden of database support would 
fall on Gnome Storage (which in turn could use gnome-db), and the 
application writer can deal with a higher level interface.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in what the WinFS solution to the 
overall "desktop database" idea looks like, there is a bunch of 
documentation starting at 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/WinFS/default.aspx 
.

	- Vlad