[Kde-kiosk] [RFC]: KConfigSQLBackend

[Waldo Bastian]

On Wednesday 12 March 2003 20:37, Caleb Tennis wrote:
> Having an alternative format for storage of configuration files, such as a
> SQL database is becoming more and more important.  One such benefactor of
> this setup, for example, is the KDE Kiosk project.  It may be desirable for
> an administrator who handles multiple machines to keep configuration files
> centralized in one place.

Certainly, it will also make roaming easier.

> Currently, it seems like in order to support this new class we would only
> need to build a KConfigSQLBackend class that handles this data structuring.
>  In order for a KConfig object to use this class, we need the ability to
> tell it to use this new backend instead of the KConfigINIBackend, perhaps
> via a new constructor.  Hopefully, everything else will "just work".
>
> The first goal of this project is to just create an interface class that a
> programmer can use as an alternative for a custom written program. 
> However, as this concept matures, it may be desirable to integrate the use
> of this class with KDE's internal setup.  That can come later, however.

Does that first step make sense? I think you would like to be able to say on a 
KDE-wide scale "Use the SQL backend instead of the .ini files" I don't see 
the point of using this only for programs specially designed for it.

As a bonus you will instantly meet the "2 programs rule" ;-)

More seriously though, I would very much like to see an implementation of 
this. I'm especially interested in the performance part. I'm somewhat afraid 
that the solution that you outlined may be rather slow. I myself played with 
the idea to keep the INI-Backend but have a file-requester service that 
downloads and uploads config files when needed. The applications themselves 
would then still access the (downloaded) files from local disk. The advantage 
of this approach would be that it might also work for files that aren't 
strictly config files (e.g. the history file of konqueror)

Anyway, I would like to see this ending up in CVS

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian at suse.com