Welcome to Open Desktop Database Project!

Introduction

Open Desktop Database (ODDB) is a project, which tries to use high-end Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for configuration of desktop systems. Currently, [[1]] is supported. It aims to support [[2]] standards. We will also use UML as a modelling tool.

RDBMS inherently offers a number of features, which make it worthwile for use in such a project:

1. Configuration data can be constrained (ensuring one MIME Type per pattern, for example)
2. Data can be easily shared on the network
3. It is easy to extend and improve the model

Data can be divided into:

1. Publically consolidated data, typically from some registry: MIME Types, Globs
2. Local configuration data : ?
3. Search index data

Manifesto

1. All functions must be available from shell, GUI and scripting (API) interface

Artefacts

Documents

Policy

• Desktop Components
• Icon Guidelines

Mechanism

• KDE improvement suggestions
• Toolkit improvement suggestions
• XOrg improvement suggestions
• Hard Stuff

Perl library

• [[%ATTACHURL%/libdesktop-perl-0.7.tar.gz][libdesktop-perl-0.7.tar.gz]]: Perl libraries and utilities for managing desktop configuration files. It lives in the Desktop:: namespace.

All commands belonging to the package are prefixed with *oddb-*. Currently, they include:

1. oddb-dbi2desktop - export data from RDBMS to .desktop files
2. oddb-desktop2dbi - import data from .desktop files to RDBMS
3. oddb-project2dbi - register OSTG project in RDBMS
4. oddb-xml2dbi- import freedesktop.org MIME Type data to RDBMS
5. oddb-xml2desktop - convert freedesktop.org MIME Type data to .desktop files (obsolete)

More commands are expected in the future.

Database Schema and Functions

• [[%ATTACHURL%/desktop-0.7.sql][desktop-0.7.sql]] - database schema and functions - used by libdesktop-perl. The file already contains a number of applications and MIME types.

Requirements:

1. PostgreSQL 7.4 or later
2. [[3]] and [[4]] procedural languages
3. [[5]] - XML package - available in PostgreSQL contrib
4. [[6]] - full text search package

Visuals

Slika:SLIXgui3.pdf

Icon theme example and guidelines - proper icons require much attention to be intuitively recognizable and look good. A dictionary of icons is also required. Example theme aims to be compatible with KDE and Gnome. Example icon theme is included in [2.0].

Models

Study of building a desktop Linux distibution from business modelling point of view.

  * [[%ATTACHURL%/sbp.pdf][LiveCD business process]] (in Slovenian)