On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:15:45 +0200, Steve Hayes <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote: >On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 07:11:12 -0500, Haines Brown ><brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote: > >>A very interesting thread. I hope no one minds if a non-genealogist >>jumps in with questions. >> >>My sense of the distinction of a relation-based and an event based >>structure is clear to me only in the abstract, but not in concrete >>terms. Would someone be willing to offer a simple example of each to >>help make the distinction clearer? > >I've given this a different subject line because it is a different thread. > >I've long felt a need for event-based software that would take a different >approach to ordinary lineage-linked genealogy software and take a different >approach. It woudl be useful for family history research rather than pure >genealogy, and for other kind of historical research as well. > >I've even developed a sort of data model, which I've semi-implemented in >creating a database to illustrate it. > >Let me try to give a concrete illustration of the difference. > >Say you are writing a biography of a person, and you want software to help >you in your research. > >In a hypothetical event-based program you would enter people who impinged on >the life of your subject as you do with genealogy software. Some would be >genealogically related and some not. > >The birth event, for example, would have your subject's birth, with parents >(obviously), but others like midwives, obstetricians and so on also linked. > >Twenty-one years later there might be a 21st birthday party, and you would >have that as an event, and a description of the event, and then link people in >your database to the event -- friends and relatives who attended. > >After entering a lot of events in the subject's life, you could create a >chronology of the events, and of the people associated with your subject at >each stage - parents, friends, teachers, classmates, bosses, and so on. If you >were doing a biography, you could include in notes on various people their >recollections of the subject, and the subjects recollections of them. > >In this hypothetical program, it should be possibly to import family relations >(via GEDCOM) from lineage-linked software, but also from address books etc. > >Such software could be used for other purposes. > >Onme of the things I do research on is African Independent churches. I have >three different databases or datasets -- churches, leaders and events. It >would be useful to be able to link them in a relational database, but I don't >have the skill to design such a database. Also, as software goes obsolete one >would spend more time on redesigning it than entering and manipulating data, >so you would never get any reseach done because you would always be tinkering >with the tools. I once tried to do it with Paradox, but now everyone uses >Access, and it would have to be rewritten from scratch, and I've never found >books on Access that can tell me what I used to know about Paradox. > >So I lumber along using an old DOS program called Inmagic, which serves my >purpose. > >I'm playing with a Windows program called askSam (I also continue to use the >DOS version) which I use for entering raw genealogical data from different >sources and material for other research projects. These are useful research >tools, but an event-based relational program would be a useful addition. > >-- >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 That sounds good for a biography, autobiography or family history but is it genealogy except periphally? I am not being critical. Hugh