Re:Why Johnny Won't Upgrade
by tonyedgecombe on Thursday August 27, 2020 @03:03AM
(#24290822)
Is there an open format for bookkeeping data? I suppose you have ledger-cli but that's hardly useful for normal people.
CSV file(s)? It's not like the underlying data is in any way complicated. A lot of software can export and import these.
Those that can't export to CSV have usually another way of getting that data into a spreadsheet application, from where you can export it as CSV...
And yes I know CSV technically sucks (varying encoding, lax standards, etc.), but it's the lowest common denominator for a lot of software.
SqLite is the solution to all our CSV problems.
There is OFX format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange
Or as someone posted here on HN a while ago - sqlite?
Re:Why Johnny Won't Upgrade
by tonyedgecombe on Thursday August 27, 2020 @04:55AM
(#24291467)
Too far down the stack. It may be the OP's data was already in sqlite but that doesn't help even if the next application uses sqlite because the schema will be different.
It's usually better to design your (critical) data around formats that can be shared across a multitude of applications than on the bet than a single app will forever exist. Of course, it's a trade-off between convenience and flexibility.