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Multiplatform frontend

Discuss GameBase, the Universal Emulator Frontend!

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CRP
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Joined: Fri May 30, 2008 1:33 pm

Multiplatform frontend

Fri May 30, 2008 1:37 pm

Hi, I have been thinking about making a multiplatform version of GameBase for some time now. The most obvious language candidate would be Python+wxWindows.
The only real problem stopping me from beginning to work on it is the database format. mdb is really a PITA on non-windows platforms, it would be much easier if it were an XML file or, even better, a sqlite database.
Are the Gamebase developers willing to consider a change to one of these open formats or will the "official" database file format always be Access?

Thanks
Chris
JohnCKirk
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Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 1:28 pm

Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:01 am

I have been thinking about a different database format while I've been working on the VB.NET version. (Almost ready for beta, not forgotten!) I don't think that XML would be a good choice for something this big, but some form of SQL engine could work well.

There are two main problems:

a) The people who create databases need to all agree on the relevant format. In particular, it needs to be something that they can actually edit easily.

b) The people who install GameBase may need to have extra software installed on their machine. An Access file is basically self-contained, whereas a database engine (like MSDE) would run separately, and people may not want that extra overhead. I see that SQLite is "serverless", so that wouldn't be a problem, but I've never used it so I don't know how well it works.

So, for now I'm sticking with the Access files, although I'd like to go up to a newer version, to support Unicode (as per a separate discussion about Russian characters). In the longer term, it might make more sense to have conversion utilities that will move an Access database into another format, then choose your backend from inside the frontend.
CRP
New Member
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri May 30, 2008 1:33 pm

Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:54 am

A few years ago I was writing a gamebase frontend for Linux (this is old stuff, never released, now lost and mostly forgotten). In that case, I converted the mdb files to sqlite using mdb-tools, and it worked really well. After creating appropriate indices speed was equivalent to access. sqlite is open-source, zero-maintenance, and there is plenty of free tools to edit a database directly. for example, this firefox extension works great!

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