[moneydance] data file corruption

[Ric Werme]

Edward Reid wrote:

> Because MD uses a document model rather than a database model, there's no 
> question that a crash (application, system, disk) in the middle of writing 
> the file will result in an unusable file.

I don't know what Moneydance does, but the usual trick is to write the
data to a temporary file (e.g. home.md-tmp) then once everything is written
and safely on the disk rename it to the permanent name 
(e.g.home.md-2007-05-02).

That way moneydance won't read in a truncated file after a crash or disk-full
event.

> MD *could* be redesigned to use, say, MySQL. I don't know how much that 
> would cost.

Being a old, err, long-time, Unix hacker, I have a strong preference for
good ol' ASCII files.  For Moneydance to use a database, it would pretty
much have to be contained in the .jar file.  One of Moneydance's strengths
is that it installs and runs so easily on many platforms.

I suppose one could write a .md to MySQL (et al) translator.  That would
open up Moneydance data to a lot of new applications.

	-Ric Werme