Tom Perrett wrote: > > I thought that XML was a proprietary > standard (ie Microsoft), Emphatically not. This is its home: http://www.w3.org/XML/ However, it's not a standard about genealogy or any other subject area. It's a set of general purpose standards and technologies. Using these standards and technologies it's possible to specify how data for some application area be represented. However before specifying such an application-specific standard one has to work out a data model. > rather than a proper standard for all such as GEDCOM. This is the crux of the problem. GEDCOM isn't "a proper standard for all". It's a file format designed for one particular purpose, the transfer of material into and out of LDS databases. Its data model is adequate for that. In fact, it includes a component which exists specifically to support LDS beliefs. On the other hand it doesn't provide anything to support situations where one has ambiguities in the data. Let me give you an example of what I mean by ambiguities. I would have no problems in getting GEDCOM to represent my ggg-father and his descendants. However when I come to his ancestry I have a problem. I know his father's name, the date of his burial and his age at death. I know his mother's name, the date of her burial but not her age at death. I have a copy of the registry record of their marriage. However there are two individuals of the same name as the father born in the same year and his age and date of death do not enable me to separate them so either of these children are candidates. What's more, for one of these children there were two individuals of the appropriate name and generation to have been his father. In other words I have three possible lines to take my ggg-father back two generations. Except I don't - I have six because there are also two individuals with the same name as the mother. Admittedly one was somewhat young but not impossibly so. As far as I'm aware the nearest that GEDCOM could come to representing this would be as a set of unlinked genealogical fragments, one starting my gggg-parents marriage and working forwards, three others representing the alternative lines for my gggg-father and two representing the alternative lines of my gggg-mother. In theory this limitation of GEDCOM doesn't prevent someone from writing a program to represent things in a better way (it might be on my list of things to do but it never seems to get near the top!). Such a program would need a data model capable of maintaining alternative links, maybe attaching a measure of confidence to each. In fact, as I've written in another post, we don't even need a program to represent this - it can be done with file cards and paper clips - and nobody has responded to my challenge to name a package which can emulate this. But if you and I had such a program and it were confined to GEDCOM as a means of data interchange it would be quite cumbersome to transfer such data from my program to yours. My program would have to throw away the information describing the ambiguities in order to write a GEDCOM. Your program would then be able to import that but we would need to find some other way of communicating the missing information so that you could enter it by hand. In practice it seems that the GEDCOM type of model has influenced genealogical S/W to the extent that there doesn't seem to be any real advance on it. -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: > Tom Perrett wrote: > >> >> I thought that XML was a proprietary >> standard (ie Microsoft), > <snip> > > In theory this limitation of GEDCOM doesn't prevent someone from > writing a program to represent things in a better way (it might be on > my list of things to do but it never seems to get near the top!). > Such a program would need a data model capable of maintaining > alternative links, maybe attaching a measure of confidence to each. > In fact, as I've written in Well, it's not the DATA model that has a problem, rather it's the fact that there is (possibly) an implied relationship muddled into the gedcom file format, and perpetuated by a traditional software display that only allows tree/family views. GEDCOM allows for a source record to be related to any of the actual data items as well as a surity level if I'm not mistaken, but regardless you simply don't have a suitable display in existing software for the condition. > another post, we don't even need a program to represent this - it can > be done with file cards and paper clips - and nobody has responded to > my challenge to name a package which can emulate this. But if you and > I I may have found one in my XML quest... http://www.genopro.com/ I don't know just yet if it supports XML, but it may just display the situation you described (if I understood it correctly!). And, if it did support an XML schema, I'd bet that the actual DATA it uses would likely overlap with genealogy and family history data. Note that I said overlap.. maybe more, maybe less, but overlap. > had such a program and it were confined to GEDCOM as a means of data > interchange it would be quite cumbersome to transfer such data from my > program to yours. My program would have to throw away the information > describing the ambiguities in order to write a GEDCOM. Your program Yes it would. Which is fine if that's all I need, isn't it? > would then be able to import that but we would need to find some other > way of communicating the missing information so that you could enter > it Unless I was using at least the same DATA granularity as you. Even if I used it for something else, XML would let me call it what I like. And if my use built upon your data (I needed it to be more granular) I'd be adding data anyhow. And, it wouldn't impact the integrity of your data set because if it didn't match your schema (rules) you'd know it because you'd have a different schema when I give it to you, or it would be remapped to your schema. The rules and mapping are usually handled in software so it sounds worse than it really is. > by hand. In practice it seems that the GEDCOM type of model has > influenced genealogical S/W to the extent that there doesn't seem to > be any real advance on it. Again, one of the problems coming out of GEDCOM is that the DATA is getting mixed with the model. The data is and will always be what it is, right? The differences are in how we each use it and think of it, imo. >