[Digikam-users] lots of photos and startup time

[Marcel Wiesweg]

> I also followed this thread quitly (as I still use old digikam on old kde
> 3.5 plus reiserfes...). But I fully support your idea to change the
> database system, if this is causing the delay.
>
> Here I have several very large MySql databases and they are very fast, but
> digikam is always very slow on opening for the first time after logging in
> as a user (also the newer digikam I installed in kde 4 for testing, I
> thought it was kde4's fault...)
>
> (Apart from the coding work) the only problem I see is that with MySql
> users will have to install MySql too. While this is more or less one click
> on Linux I don't know how it is on other systems.
>
> Maybe there could be an option for the user: sqlite as a (slow) standard,
> but working out of the box, and MySql as an option, if the user has
> installed it and knows the path etc. Isn't amarok offering something
> similar?

Amarok has dropped Sqlite support and has only one backend now, which is MySQL 
embedded.
Akonadi requires MySQL (server (*)) currently, with plans to support 
Postgresql as well, but not sqlite and as I understood, not Mysql embedded 
(**).
This means if you want to use Amarok, you will have MySQL installed (embedded 
is probably in the same package as the full server for most distros, but need 
not).
If you want to use KMail in KDE4.5 or 4.6, you will have MySQL installed.

MySQL will in real life become a dependency for KDE applications (not 
libraries or runtime) within the next twelve months.

There are voices asking for a "desktop database" as more and more applications 
require a db; but there is no driving force for that as far as I see.

Marcel

(*) MySQL embedded's full name is "MySQL Embedded Server" but for short 
distinction I speak of embedded vs. server
(**) They needed to optimize for high throughput, and found only dbs >= MySql 
server sufficient for their needs. Not sure about the results for MySQL 
embedded