Genealogy

[damej]

I am interested in recording my genealogy info. I am concerned that stand alone genealogical programs will become obsolete. Is there a good way to set something like this up in either Excel or Access. I believe these formats will be supported and updated.

 

[Oorang]

Hi damej,
Welocme to the board! Very intersting question. Visio might be the better tool for a personal family tree, but you could certainly represent the Information in a table. Just lay it out like so:

PersonID: Unique Identifier representing the person.
Father: PersonID of Father
Mother: PersonID of Mother
Name:
DOB:
Etc:

So the information would be stored rather easily and would be searchable, queryable. Where you bump into some work is displaying the information. It will be very doable but not trivial and probably require a programmatic solution.

 

[damej]

Thanks Oorang,

I'm an amatuer so I don't know if I am up to it. Just hate to spend the time and find out my file format is out of date.

 

[Oorang]

The how the data is displayed is almost secondary to how it is stored. Something like that you would want to preserve accross generations. For the digital media I would probably keep backing the date up to csv files. Just about any database and spreadsheet worth their salt can read them. So if you you want to make/change or update the interface (or front end) the data remains intact. You can switch from access to excel to SQL to Oracle and back again and you will be fine. For storing it across the generations... Have you considered leather bound low acidity paper?

 

[damej]

Archive paper records is what I have now. I wanted something to share across the internet. I may just scan and post it as a web photo albumn. I think then I could get a few of the family to help put together the data and spread out the work. The .cvs file is a possibility. I want something cross platform. If I can find a dedicated program that will import/export .cvs, then I can have the features I want and still have a safety net.

Thanks

 

[Oorang]

The photo approach out to be a nice low effort solution for the visual side. And the csv is nicely searchable. Then later on you can develop out a programtic solution to displaying the data. Have you dabbled in VBA (or an other language) at all?

 

[damej]

I am aware of VBA but not in any way proficient. I am the production worker on my job that is least intimidated by the computer. So I set up and record the raw data for the accounting types to use.
I am also a landlord and export reports from Quickbooks into Excel to formate for loan applications and the like. Just call me a casual user.

Thanks for the input.

 

[SydneyGeek]

You *could* build your own genealogy program but you'll find that the large sites (like genealogy.com) have a vested interest in keeping their stuff updated.

That particular site (and others) are web-based, so you log in and they run the application for you.

If you really want to roll your own we can help, but in thins case you may find that it's much quicker to get up and running with a ready-made solution.

Denis

 

[damej]

That's the way I am heading.

Thanks