[Shotwell] The DB debate

[Peter DO Smith]

I see in earlier threads it was discussed whether the present system
of storing photo data in a sqlite database should be retained.

I much prefer the present system, please retain it.

It is simple to write add-on programs that query/update the database.
It took me fives minutes to inspect the database structure to
understand it well enough so that I could query it and update it.

This simplicity helped me to re-organise my photos after importing. A
large group of my photos had no exif header, an artifact of a batch
program I wrote. After importing several thousand photos I could not
find them because they were not assigned to an event, having no date.

Realising my mistake, I used jhead to create exif headers and assign
dates. But now when I tried to import again I was told the photos were
already in the database and therefore I could not import again. What
to do?

Fortunately, because you used a database, it was trivial for me to
write a SQL query that located and deleted the photos from the
database, allowing me to re-import them.

So please, keep the present system. From my point of view it works really well.

Arising out of this experience I would like to make two suggestions:-

1) Allow the user an option of forcing the import to accept the same
photos again. This will allow to reorganise the folder structure of
his photos.
2) Where the photos have no exif date create an 'unassigned' event and
link these photos to that event.

Peter