[GRASS-dev] sqlite and grass64

[Michael Barton]

On Jan 13, 2008, at 4:40 PM, Glynn Clements wrote:

>>
>> AFAICT, SQLite has considerably more functionality than our current
>> dbf driver. I like it for a lot of reasons. A couple issues to
>> consider, however.
>>
>> dbf is a widely recognized file format that can be read or  
>> imported by
>> very many other applications directly. While the SQLite database
>> engine can export into several interchange format, the native SQLite
>> file format is much less widely read by other applications.
>
> I would have expected most applications to access databases via ODBC,
> rather than trying to interface with DBMS-specific libraries,
> protocols or file formats directly.
>

Most desktop applications don't access databases via ODBC. Folks that  
ommonly use large databases--and especially remote ones--will likely  
be using ODBC on a regular basis. However, this is not the case for  
many (perhaps most) users. They will have small to modest sized local  
databases. Setting up ODBC is an extra step that will be complicated  
and confusing for people who are not familiar with it, even via  
GUI's. It shouldn't be necessary to simply access a small attribute  
table of GRASS vector data. I don't particularly like dbf, but it IS  
easily accessible from many apps.

SQLite Browser is a light-weight application that we could package  
with GRASS if we wanted to switch to SQLite before making wxPython  
the default GUI. It's nice, but my concern with it is that is appears  
not to have been updated for a couple years. I found one other free  
tool for the Mac to access SQLite databases (a couple others to  
manage them only). There seems to be more available for Windows and  
Linux.

Michael
____________________
C. Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
Director of Graduate Studies
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
Arizona State University

Phone: 480-965-6262
Fax: 480-965-7671
www: <www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton>