[email protected] wrote: > Ian Goddard wrote: >> Nope. You end up having to make such changes because you didn't think >> it through in the first place. > > Oh yes, I recognize that argument. But I've never come across a project that > didn't have it surprises, even after having written down and discussed and > agreed upon the requirements document. OTOH well planned S/W products are able to cope with a wide range of applications. I used to be a sysadmin for a client using a particular ERP package for warehouse management. Another site of the same company used the same package to support a print-buying business and a hardware service business. I don't doubt that other users of the package had distinctly different ways of deploying it. %>< >> By now it should be clear how to treat this. You recognise /in advance/ >> that the hierarchies will be time-dependent and make provision for >> optional start and finish dates. You also recognise that a particular >> place may be simultaneously in different hierarchies, e.g. >> ecclesiastical (even different ecclesiastical hierarchies, such as >> different Anglican & RC parishes), manorial, Poor Law. You adopt a data >> model that fits and then code to that. > > Sounds good, but are you british? > I think you underestimate the complexity of it all. My family tree (my > mother's work) goes back to around 1590. Our regions (Flanders) have been > jostled around between the big powers for a number of times and reorganized > again and again. The town where most of my family lives now (and also in the > past, has even been scinded in two (part Spanish, part French) for a number > of years. This is a specific example of a general requirement. It's essentially no different from the situation that Holmfirth chapelry was split between two parishes and that things were shuffled round in both ecclesiastical and civil terms. Provide a /general/ framework for constructing location hierarchies which makes provision for a split and it makes no difference at what level the split happens. You didn't mention whether the town has different names in different languages which sometimes happens. Again, it's a general requirement; if you allow for synonyms you can handle Pontefract vs Pomfret just as easily as Koeningsberg vs Kaliningrad. > I think a lot of family tree researches simply give up there, it > is way to time consuming to record it all. Again my area confuses more distant researchers because there's no effective means to convey these changes. Wouldn't it be better if there were? -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk