Re: persistent data feature

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Tomas Hlavaty <tom@logand.com> [2021-12-11 22:54]:
> > And I think that a fear of getting a such thing into emacs, under the 
> > excuse that “for the developer, it works” and that “it brings more 
> > features” is what makes people afraid from something even as minimal as 
> > sqlite… for emacs is one of the very few software to be minimal and 
> > transparent enough to have a better situation than sqlite
> 
> Databases are complex.

They are not more complex then the text files of which user has lack
of knowledge what are they about. If user has knowledge of programming
language A, but not programming language B, that B will appear
"complex". It is individual perception.

> For example, will users have to deal with schema upgrades?

They need not think of the background. Just as you use M-x customize
in quite nice way, one can use database from User Interface.

> Will they have to deal with sql?

That depends of programmers who make the User Interface. Me I am using
least SQL in the database management, and I can add new column to
database table by using "A" and then say that column shall contain
integers or dates only and I would call the column "Date Created".

My interface for database editing is similar to below. I can edit,
update, or nullify some entries. One could call all of the table
columns "variables", and in this example there is table "variables"
where one table column is called "variables_name" with visible
representation being "Variable", having "url" as its value:

                             ID   84
                           Note   nil
                       Variable   "url"
                          Value   "http://www.example.com"
                       Template   "Nice 1"
                       Language   nil
                           Area   nil
                           Type   "Standard"

If there is a way to list all customizable variables, I could as well
insert them into the database under the Emacs type, and under specific
Emacs profile. With network databases I could have my profile fully on
network accessible only by my username/password, accessible through
Emacs on any side of the world. That is just hypothetical possibility,
though not so far from realization. I am using database backed
variables since 20 years already for purposes of Website Revision
System. I could as well store Emacs Lisp variables, all those from my
init.el and I seriously think about temporarily re-defining `setq' to
function that will slurp the variable into the database, and then
forget about the init.el

> Will they have to deal with sqlite specific issues?

Users need not even know that there is sqlite backend. One could use
multiple backends while users having always same User Interface.

> Once sqlite is linked into emacs, it will eventually infest
> almost everything and emacs will be stuck with it forever.

Maybe "infest" is meant to mean something bad, though I think of it as
positive. Emacs has to have GDBM built-in since decades, and I still
wonder why it did not have. 

-- 
Jean

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