XUL and stuff [was Re: Netscape 6.. ohmygod...]

[Michael Vanecek]

Shameless plug? Are you a gnucash developer? We use Quickbooks to manage 
finances at my computer shop - this includes managing banking, payroll, 
taxes, invoicing, recievables and payables, estimates and inventory. 
You're probably right about MySQL, but since this is a small shop and 
I'm already familiar with MySQL that didn't seem to be a problem. I 
could always use Postgres with it's finer resolution of locking policies 
if it becomes a problem. Last I checked, gnucash was basically a Quicken 
clone, not a Quickbooks clone. I didn't see anything in GnuCash that 
could do what I need. If you know differently, please let me know. Why 
duplicate efforts? I am interested in writing though software. If XUL 
can't handle external datasources well (I know that Javascript is used 
for file I/O - but I don't know of any Javascript/SQL interfaces), 
perhaps then I'll just do Gnome and PHP based on a central, portable 
library. That may still be a challenge. Both PHP and Gnome handle data 
and databases very differently and I haven't written anything in Gnome 
that could make use of an Apache module. Hmm, I think PHP can be used to 
execute system commands, maybe I'll explore that. I could do XML, but I 
prefer the power of a database application instead. Hey, there's an 
effort to bind Gnome to PHP, maybe there's something in that. :) I've 
actually played with the Perl binding...

Mike

Derek Neighbors wrote:

> Mike,
> 
> Warning shameless plug.
> 
> 
>>Been to the mentioned sites. Good references. I've also been through the 
>>xulnote tutorial. I'd like to write a financial application in XUL to 
>>replace our Quickbooks (the only reason one of our computers is still 
>>infested with MSWindows), so I need to learn how to interface XUL with 
>>
> 
> If you want quickbooks for GNU\Linux I urge you too look at GNUCash
> (http://www.gnucash.org)
> 
> 
>>MySQL and to learn more about server/client relationships from the XUL 
>>viewpoint. It'd be nice to have the XUL app on a central server rather 
>>than as components of the client, but it's not critical - we have a 
>>small network with only a few computers. I'll also have a PHP equivalent 
>>
> 
> Originally we were going to write financials in XUL.  The problem is they
> at the time and probably still do not handle external data very well.
> They require basically XML datasources.  This is what prompted us to write
> data aware XML markup for XPlatform forms with GNU Etnerprise.  You might
> wisht to check it out http://www.gnue.org.  All forms are done in XML like
> XUL, but you need to know no SQL or databinding to make data ware it
> 'automagically' binds for you.
> 
> BTW: Unless MySQL has fixed table level locking you DO NOT want to use
> MySQL for financial applications.  Table level locking will KILL you even
> in a small environment.  As any time your run complex reports you in
> essence will be locking out your data entry team. Performance will be
> horrible unless you do some replication scheme to make a reporting
> 'server'.  
>  
> 
>>too, and maybe a Gnome equivalent as soon as development on Gnome_DB 
>>matures... The database will be the same, so it doesn't matter what 
>>client I write. I need to brainstorm on ways to abstract the database 
>>functions so that I an use one library for all platforms - Gnome, PHP or 
>>
> 
> GNU Enterprise does this.  Currently we support Oracle, DB2, PostGRES and
> MySQL.
> 
> 
>>XUL. It'd be nice to have the core application completely independent of 
>>the interface so that any interface can be written to it.
>>
> 
> This is concept of GNU Enterprise as well.  One form source will work on
> Win32, Motif, GTK, Mac and soon WWW with no ifdefs etc..
> 
> BTW: Mozilla's XUL went down hill around M10 when Mike Shaver departed and
> Dave Hyatt seemed to be less involved with data binding.  Most
> unfortunate.  Plus the code was still so impossible to compile much less
> code against at that time, we decided XUL wasnt best for us.
> 
> In its defense its still cool if you are wanting to just do XML data
> sources.
> 
> Derek
> 
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