[GRASS-dev] SQLite as default DB in GRASS 6.3+

[William Kyngesburye]

The main thing I'm concerned about SQLite support is that I think by  
default it stuffs all tables for all vector layers in a mapset into a  
single DB file.

I think you can connect to different DB files before creating  
vectors, thus separating them, but it would be nice to have something  
more automatic, like what happens with DBF files.  Say a subfolder  
for SQLite DBs, and connect to the folder, new vectors get their own  
SQLite DB file generated automatically in that folder.

Maybe a bit confusing since you would have 'database' meaning the  
folder and 'database' meaning the SQLite files in that folder,

A few problems with a single DB file:

- It could get HUGE.  I'm not worried so much about file system  
limits, but it's a possibility.

- easy for corruption in the DB file to make all vectors in the  
mapset useless.

- backups.  You can't backup a single vector, since you would be  
backing up the attribute data for all vectors in the process.  And  
incremental backups would be longer (especially if it's huge) - if a  
single small vector changed (attributes) in a mapset, you still need  
to backup the attribute DB for all vectors.

On Aug 23, 2006, at 8:19 AM, Hamish wrote:

> Hi,
>
> shall we now go ahead and make SQLite the default DB for GRASS 6.3+?
>
>
> Hamish

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

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