[GRASS-dev] sqlite and grass64

[Glynn Clements]

Hamish wrote:

> > Are there any instances where the dbf driver can do some
> > functionality that the sqlite driver cannot? I use the sqlite driver
> > all the time for my work with no problems.
> 
> DBF works "out of the box" on all platforms and is as well tested and
> implimented as these things get. Its problems are well known.
> 
> AFAIU SQLite (by default) stores the DBs for all vector maps in a
> single file per mapset. This makes it hard to share individual vector
> maps and may have LFS issues when your data + mapset gets to be huge.
> (??)

I doubt that LFS will be an issue in practice; I doubt that you'll
find an SQLite without LFS on any platform which supports it (i.e. 
everything except for ancient Unices).

It probably wouldn't be hard to modify the SQLite DBMI driver to allow
one file per map (like for DBF), but then you lose the ability to
perform joins (OTOH, if you're using DBF, you never had this ability
in the first place).

Personally, I feel that the DBF driver is sufficiently "sub par"
compared to any other DBMS that I wouldn't consider "won't work with
the DBF driver" to be a valid design consideration in GRASS.

Developers should feel free to use e.g. arithmetic operators and joins
in SQL queries, rather than being constrained by the rather limited
capabilities of the DBF driver.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>