Re: [gentoo-user] Good Library Management software

[kashani <kashani-list@badapple.net>]

Dirk Uys wrote:
> Other than that there is also the added complexity to the
> installation. You have to create a user in the database, create the
> database and grant the user all the needed permission to that specific
> database.
> 
> And what if one app prefers mySQL and another one postgreSQL? Now I
> need to run two database servers that will be quite capable to fill
> the data needs of two small businesses just because I want to use a
> music player and a library utility for my ~50 books laying around.

	I can see your point and in many ways I agree. The issue is that local 
data storage limits the application in larger environments. A db 
provides a ready made and easily understandable way for multiple 
machines to read and write data. Being a large IT shop person I tend to 
avoid anything that does not use a db since it's unlikely that I will be 
able to use it at a job in the future. Nothing worse than having www07 
go down and take the company blog with it because we couldn't run the 
blog software on all ten machines because it had to use local storage. 
Additionally it's easier to backup one db cluster than twenty odd 
applications.

I can recommend a few things to make dealing with a db easier.

1. Settle on Mysql, 99% of anything you'll install can use it.
2. However apps that can use more than one database backened are 
*always* better written, more mature, and is usually a sign that the 
schema has been designed rather than tossing data in tables.
3. Don't mess with my.cnf unless you really need to. Default Mysql 
serving settings spec about 100MB of RAM usage which should be plenty 
for local apps with small storage needs.
4. Spend an hour learning about how your db works and come up with a 
system for user accounts and database names.

I always do something like this in Mysql:
create database kash_gallery2;
grant all privileges on kash_gallery2.* to kash_gallery2@localhost 
identified by 'mys3cr3tp2ss';

This way I know that only the kash_gallery2 user can access the 
kash_gallery2 db. I also know that kash_gallery2 is my Gallery install 
and not someone else's. I can easily add kash_gallery3 when a new 
version comes out and don't have to worry about how to deal with db 
'gallery' which I think is the default. You'll have to change the 
settings in the config file of the app to reflect your changes, but that 
should be simple.

kashani