• From: Australia
  • Registered: 04/04/2011
  • Posts: 2

Topic: Beginning work on database abstraction / Postgres support

Good afternoon,

I am a developer working in Canberra, Australia.  A client of mine requires an open source accounting package (migrating from MYOB), and we have found that FrontAccounting meets our needs quite well.  However, our existing systems are on Postgres and we very much prefer to use FA with Postgres, rather than MySQL.

From searching the forums, I get the impression that the FA developers do not have any interest in supporting databases other than MySQL at this time.  Therefore, I am about to begin work on a fork of FrontAccounting which is database-agnostic, with initial support for both MySQL and Postgres.  One of the benefits of using Postgres will be the option to store individual company tables in separate schemas, rather than having to use table prefixes.

My work will be open source, publically available, and license-compatible with FA.  This way, if the FA developers would like to incorporate some or all of my work back into FA at a later date, they will be readily able to do so.   If there is anything else I can do at the beginning to make a potential future merge easier, please let me know.  My intention is to have my fork track the current release version of FA (i.e., beginning with 2.3.1).

If you are interested in this project and would like me to post the occasional update on my progress to the FA forum/mailing list, I am happy to do so.

Kind regards,
Brendan Jurd

  • joe
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 03/15/2007
  • Posts: 5,107

Re: Beginning work on database abstraction / Postgres support

Hello Brendan,

We have an ambition to make the SQL compatible with mysql, postgres and MS Sql Server. We have a project planning to go into release 2.4 (next major release). This work is in final progress but stalled a bit due to heavy work with release 2.3.3.
The test runs fine on all these DBs, but some minor fixes are to be done.
So either stay put, or make your own approach. You do as you please.

/Joe

  • From: Australia
  • Registered: 04/04/2011
  • Posts: 2

Re: Beginning work on database abstraction / Postgres support

joe wrote:

We have an ambition to make the SQL compatible with mysql, postgres and MS Sql Server. We have a project planning to go into release 2.4 (next major release). This work is in final progress but stalled a bit due to heavy work with release 2.3.3.
The test runs fine on all these DBs, but some minor fixes are to be done.
So either stay put, or make your own approach. You do as you please.
/Joe

Thanks for the information Joe.  My client's requirement is rather urgent, so we aren't in a position to wait until 2.4.  We will most likely go ahead with our own fork, and perhaps switch back to vanilla FA down the road, when Postgres support is introduced.

Let me know if you would like us to help out with alpha/beta testing of your Postgres support.

  • From: India
  • Registered: 01/10/2018
  • Posts: 2

Re: Beginning work on database abstraction / Postgres support

Hello,

mySQL/ mariaDB is a deal-breaker for us (source: prior horror scenarios). We do not mind paying for building in support for postgres.

However, the primary concern is that any updates, future versions of FA system may not support postgres after we have one running. If we have any interest in moving in this direction, we wouldn't mind spending a bit of money to seed this.

Your thoughts, hate-mail, criticisms welcome.

/MTM

PS: I really do not wish to get into mySQL vs postgres debate