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Archiver > ROOTSMAGIC-USERS > 2008-05 > 1210704381


From: "Robert Chudek - K0RC" <>
Subject: [RMagic] Request for advice about managing multiple databases
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 13:46:21 -0500


RMers,

I would like advice on how to manage my genealogy projects. If there's a better forum for this kind of discussion, please tell me where to go! :-)

I am using RM 3. Here's the specifics:

My paternal surname is rather unique. I found isolated groups of families in various regions around the world. My approach has been to create a database for each group with the intention of bringing a new branch into my main database when a link is discovered.

My first question is whether this is a reasonable approach? Or should I keep all these separate branches "floating around" in one master database?

Recently I found a tree that "meshes" with my primary database. Mine has several thousand names and about 800 families. The new tree has about 400 people and 80 families. In a quick review I found about a dozen "hits" of identical individuals. This is the largest outside collection of people I have found that attaches to my tree. Usually I find one or two individuals or a few new facts here and there.

Last night I created a new database and imported the two trees. I restarted this process several times when I discovered "better" ways to deal with combining the data. This was new territory for me and I was learning "on the job".

At first, a straight GEDCOM import while tagging each record with a source worked okay. Then I tried another idea of color coding the two source databases red and blue. I drag and dropped these sources into the new database. This "kind of " worked... not all the records in the blue database (second) came over in blue. I'll look at this again to see what I did wrong.

NOTE: A nice feature would be to provide a color coding scheme with the GEDCOM import.

My third step was running a manual Duplicate Search/Merge. This was tedious and took a while, but gave me a feeling for the process and the number of people "intersects" in the new database.

I guess the bottom line is to ask if there is a better approach for this situation? At the moment I'm not too concerned with the quality of the resulting database, citations, etc. I want to get a handle on a good process to follow and any tricks that will help in this situation.

Best regards,

Robert Chudek
www.chudek.com
www.czudek.com

P.S. Again, if there's a better forum for this kind of discussion, please tell me where to go! :-)


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