Pilot-QOF 0.1.1 review

Pilot-QOF converts Palm databases to queriable objects

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Neil Williams

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Pilot-QOF converts Palm databases to queriable objects. A Palm database record is an instance of the object, called an Entity.

Objects are collated to form one data source, called books, that can contain any number of different objects - depending on the application running QOF. Pilot-QOF writes selected palm data to QSF XML offline storage and running SQL-type queries on the live data or XML file.

Pilot-QOF currently supports the four main applications (Expenses, Contacts, Calendar and ToDo) and work is now progressing to support other free software Palm databases like PCash and FreeCoins.

Liberate your Palm data to use in any number of other applications and scripts.

QOF provides a set of C language utilities for performing generic structured complex queries on a set of data held by a set of C/C++ objects. This framework allows programmers to add query support to their applications without having to hook into a SQL Database.

QOF provides the framework, the new QOF XML backend (QSF) provides the off-line storage and a format for a data stream between different applications, including converting QOF objects.

QOF frees the data from the application, allowing queries, data mining, abstraction and data interchange without having to recompile the original application, let alone program the filters. Central to QOF are the ideas of databases and objects.

A Palm database is an object in QOF. A Palm database record is an instance of the object, called an Entity. QOF then collates all supported objects to form one data source that can be queried. QOF allows the programmer to easily find all other instances of any one type, just by having one instance of that type.

Objects are collected in books and a book can contain any number of different objects - depending on the application running QOF. The book is the central data source within QOF and a book can be queried or written out to XML using the QOF Serialisation Format: QSF.

In real terms, QOF will be running as a framework around the libpisock library from pilot-link so the offline storage, (QSF XML), will be written by pilot-qof. Pilot-link itself does not directly support users who cross timezones with their Palm - it may be wise that users are reminded that if timezone issues are important to their DateBook or Expenses data, the user should take the sensible precaution of changing the Palm Preferences to use the same timezone as the computer running pilot-qof.

Once in QOF, all dates and times are UTC so the QSF XML files can be freely exchanged across timezones without complication.

Pilot-QOF is free software relased under the GPL license.