So you have been watching the last videos[*], and you wonder where this all is going to take us to.

A user posed the question:

Betekent dit dat in de toekomst de database ergens in de cloud staat en dat je via een browser in kan loggen?

(Does it mean that in the future the database stays somewhere “in the cloud” and that we log in via a browser?)

Well, no, and yes, depending on how you look at it.

You can install ghini server on your own server if you think so, and keep all in-house.

Or you can ask me to host it “in the cloud”, if you prefer.

perplex

Right, I know, and I’m even going to give you a further technical and necessary explanation, so please take a deep breath, and read on.

freedom

If it still makes any sense to you, please let me understand what you understand, so I’ll fix my writing.

You have been using ghini.desktop, and you know its structure, let’s review it together:

  • There’s a central database server (this doesn’t change),

  • This database can also be a simple sqlite3 file (also this options stays unaltered),

  • Or you can use a database server like MySQL, or PostgreSQL, or whatever you prefer (again no change here),

  • The core of ghini.desktop is a Python data abstraction layer, based on SQLAlchemy, connecting to your database. (This does change.)

    This layer is now isolated from the user interface, it’s still written in Python, but based on Django, and it’s obviously brand new. You have to install this part, sort of how you had to install ghini.desktop. The extra choice now here is that you can ask me to run this part for you ‘in the cloud’.

  • The other part of ghini.desktop is the user interface, the visible part of the software, the one offering you menus and buttons windows and input fields. (Here, an even more radical change.)

    This has become a lightweight javascript program, and my goal was to let you hardly realize there is any program there. All you see it’s a web page, and of course it’s a smart web page and quite some work is going into it, but I hope that you will not immediately realize that this web page is the program you are using.

    You are ‘installing’ this part, in your desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet, regardless its operating system, by simply directing your browser to the ghini login page.

Makes any sense?

Oh, and an otherwise interesting remark I got: “ben benieuwd hoe het zich verder ontwikkelt” (I’m curious to see how it develops). Well, how to put it. This software, any software, it’s written to solve problems, or to help users address a problem. How it develops, it depends on the understanding that the programmer has of the previous two concepts ‘user’ and ‘problem’. The great philosopher Bertrand Russel thought there was nothing that can’t be done by formal logic. It took 20 years to have a German mathematician prove him wrong, but if we stay in the framework of botany, please be assured that the only limiting factor is not Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, but the lack of criticism.