Re: Request for upload HSQLDB 2.3.3.zip on http://dev-www.libreoffice.org/src

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 08:44:22PM +0000, Caolán McNamara wrote:
> On Mon, 2015-12-14 at 12:47 +0100, Michael Stahl wrote:

> > i thought we use an old version of HSQLDB because its file format
> > changed and so if we upgrade then we create compatibility issues with
> > HSQLDB files embedded in ODB documents; is there more backward
> > compatibility nowadays?

> IIRC we were sort of hoping to move to non-java firebird and figure
> out some way to migrate from hsqldb to that format (insert vague
> hand waving here).

Yes, but someone needs to do the work.

> Though as it stands the firebird format is platform dependent, which
> suggests the possibility of using the platform independent firebird
> backup format (stalled as https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/14968/)

That gerrit change is merely removing the "rebuild the indexes because
we might have changed the ICU version" work-around to a part of the
format platform-dependence, namely the dependence of the indexes to
the ICU version.

It does not even begin to move to the backup format. It only makes a
simplification that moving to the backup format would make possible.

> We should probably decide if we still want to do that. If we do then
> it probably doesn't make sense to change the default database format
> twice in succession and possibly need two ways to convert hsqldb1
> and hsqldb2 files to firebird ?

In the abstract, I think moving to a non-Java database, such as
Firebird, is still desirable. But this being a volunteer based
project, happens what someone does, what we have the
manpower for. (~do-ocracy)

If we have a working patch for hsqldb2 (or any other "good" embedded
database), but no progress on the firebird front, I'm not going to
hold my breath and block the patch. In other words: if the will /
manpower available delivers us hsqldb2, but not firebird, then that's
we are getting.

Note that we can have several embedded databases, that's not a
problem. Then, there's the choice of which one is the default. Even
in the plan you outline, we would keep HSQLDB 1.8 in parallel of
Firebird for some time for backwards compatibility reasons.

-- 
Lionel