On Sunday 29 May 2011 19:15, Steve Hayes ([email protected]) opined: > On Sun, 29 May 2011 12:46:21 -0600, Bob Melson <[email protected]> > wrote: > >>It appears, however, that Cousin Mortimer's record will result in a >>unique ID on every machine on which a *ID is generated, so for N copies >>of the >>record on N machines there will be N unique identifiers. And that raises >>a question about the utility of those identifiers - if every one is >>unique, how do/can we know that they refer to the same record? > > And if you merge two of those records, believing that they are same > person, will the resulting record have TWO unique identifiers? > Well if your merge works like the ones I'm familiar with, you have a choice of which fields of Record B to merge into Record A, so you could use A's *ID or B's. Or you could delete both and cause yet a third to be generated. At this point, dunno quite WHY you'd want to preserve the *IDs in a merge, not least because they serve no purpose in, ummmm, validating the records. *IDs are just large numbers, the utility of which in genealogy appears to be undefined. Swell Ol' Bob > > -- > Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa > Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm > Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com > E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop > uk -- Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas ----- The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes -- Thomas Paine

On Sun, 29 May 2011 19:56:38 -0600, Bob Melson <[email protected]> wrote: >> And if you merge two of those records, believing that they are same >> person, will the resulting record have TWO unique identifiers? >> >Well if your merge works like the ones I'm familiar with, you have a choice >of which fields of Record B to merge into Record A, so you could use A's >*ID or B's. Or you could delete both and cause yet a third to be >generated. At this point, dunno quite WHY you'd want to preserve the *IDs >in a merge, not least because they serve no purpose in, ummmm, validating >the records. *IDs are just large numbers, the utility of which in >genealogy appears to be undefined. RINs are smaller numbers than UIDs, and I use them for identifying people in my main database. I have several rough research databases for particular surnames or areas (for which I use PAF), and if I copy anything from there to my main database, or vice versa, I used the RIN from my main database as a "Custom ID". No doubt a large number could serve the same purpose, but a smaller one works just as well. -- Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 05-29-2011 21:56, Bob Melson wrote: > generated. At this point, dunno quite WHY you'd want to preserve the *IDs > in a merge, not least because they serve no purpose in, ummmm, validating And because doing so subverts the purpose for which they were originally abused. An ID generated to uniquely identify a particular record (even though there is no good reason for doing so) is now attached to a _different_ record. (How do I persuade #%^$% Thunderbird to stop trying to "help" me attach a file every time I use the word "attach" ?) -- Wes Groleau There are two types of people in the world … http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/barrett?itemid=1157