BitPim needs to store several types of information including items such as
phonebook entries, wallpaper images, and changes to items to implement undo
or perform synchronization. There are two types of storage used. All of
this storage is in a directory specified by Edit - Settings - Data directory.
It defaults to My Documents\BitPim on Windows and $HOME/.bitpim-files
on Linux and Mac.
Note that BitPim does not require the user to manage moving data between persistent storage (disk) and transient storage (RAM) since that is user hostile and the program is perfectly capable of doing so itself without handholding.
This is the old storage format and is the simplest. There are separate
directories for each content type, and within that directory there is a
file named index.idx. The contents of the file are a pretty
printed Python dictionary. On any change the
file is overwritten with new content.
This format does not allow for undo, nor does it allow for multiple copies of BitPim to be running at the same time.
With BitPim 0.7.24 a database was introduced. Information is stored as a journal of changes. This allows for undo as well as multiple running copies. If you would like to see what is actually stored then see the information in working with the code.
The rest of BitPim internally works with the Python dictionary objects, and the database module stores and restores it from the SQL tables behind the scenes. If you want to inject custom data into BitPim then use the database module.
When BitPim starts up, each data source looks for the index.idx file first. If it doesn't exist then the database is used. If it does exist, then the information is saved to the database and the index.idx file is renamed.
The actual database used is SQLite. This has the benefits of being simple, multi-process safe and high performance. There is a lot more detail on the SQLite web site. APSW (Another Python SQLite Wrapper) is used to interface to Python.
BitPim Online Help built 17 January 2010