Introduction

Welcome to Open Desktop Database Project!

Open Desktop Database (ODDB) is a project, which tries to use high-end Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for configuration of desktop systems. Currently, PostgreSQL is supported. It aims to support freedesktop.org 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 two kind:

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

Artifacts

Documents

• Suggestions for improvements in KDE
• Suggestions for improvements in XOrg
• More complicated things
• About Icons

Perl library

So far, the project has produced a number of artifacts:

• 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

• 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. plpgsql and plperl procedural languages
3. pgxml_dom.sql - XML package - available in PostgreSQL contrib
4. tsearch2 - full text search package

Visuals

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 Slix 2.0.

• SLIXgui.pdf:

Models

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

• LiveCD business process (in Slovenian)

Website tools

•    (More options in WebSearch)
• WebChanges: Display recent changes to the Desktop web
• WebIndex: List all Desktop topics in alphabetical order. See also the faster WebTopicList
• WebNotify: Subscribe to an e-mail alert sent when something changes in the Desktop web
• WebStatistics: View access statistics of the Desktop web
• WebPreferences: Preferences of the Desktop web (TWikiPreferences has site-wide preferences)