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Archiver > TX-CEMETERIES > 2004-11 > 1101655223


From: "Tammy Blandino" <>
Subject: RE: [TXCem] RE: Centralized Database
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 09:20:23 -0600
In-Reply-To: <01C4D19A.11797DC0.prsmith@houston.rr.com>


>> I think of search of the last name with soundex is the best way to go.

> My family name is SMITH and my mother was a WHITE. Not a good idea.
> There
> absolutely should be a way to search on multiple fields: last name, first
> name, middle initial, date of death, date of birth, county of death, city
> of death, cemetery, social security number, funeral home, wife's given
> name, etc. or any combination thereof.

That's the idea. My thought is to provide a form and allow a person to put
in their query information. The query would then search any those fields
that were not empty. Of course this is a preliminary idea and other things
may come out later.

> GPS info is a good idea. I put coordinate information on my web site for
> burial sites but not for each grave. This is especially useful for small,

> family plots that now reside in the middle of forests, dairy pastures,
> tobacco fields, etc. where the directions might be 2 miles south on Hwy 99

> from the intersection of first street and then about 200 yards east in
> Farmer White's corn field. Good luck finding that one.

I had not thought initially of GPS data, but you are correct in that would
be very useful. Perhaps a combination of both GPS and directions would be
good. How do you go about getting GPS info anyway? I'm not familiar with
this.

> Even without a
> GPS, you can get coordinates that are close by installing a mapping
> program on your laptop (I like Delorme's offerings) and then putting the
> cursor
> over the spot where you think the geographic center of the cemetery is
> located. I saw a Delorme package for $69 (I think) that includes a small
> GPS receiver that you attach to your auto's windshield and good handhelds
> can be had on eBay for about $50 so we're not talking a great deal of
> money.

THANKS!!! :) I'll check into that as I'm gathering equipment.

>> I would like everyone to dream a little dream. If you were the one
>> building
>> this database, what would you put into it? Would you want to be able to
>> search for a first name alone? Would you want driving directions to a
>> given
>> cemetery? Would you want to be able to search the entire state for a
>> given
>> date range and surname, or soundex code? Would you want links to
>> pictures?
>> Would you want tombstone inscriptions? Would you want data supplemented
>> from the county records?

> Yes. Why would you want to limit it with less capability?

> On the other hand, how much disk space (and backup space) do you have,
> Tammy? Are you planning on hosting this site yourself or purchase space?
> Are you going to resize/sharpen/brighten/set pixel density/etc. a million
> photographs?

At this point I'm not looking at anything. At this point I'm keeping my
mind open to the possibilities. I don't expect to include everything that
people may ask for, maybe never, but I want to have some idea of what is
wanted so we can plan for the future. I've found that adding functionality
after the fact can be a pain if the database wasn't designed properly.

At this point we are in the brainstorming stage. This is the first stage of
any database development. When brainstorming you throw onto the table
everything that you can think of no matter how wild it may sound. Often
these wild things lead to practical things. That is why I want everyone to
dream. :)

> It's a ton of work.

Don't I know it!!!

> You could be looking at millions of
> photos - certainly hundreds of thousands if all cemeteries are cataloged
> and photographed. A million photos times 50K (which is what mine average
> and they are small) would require 50,000 megabytes of disk space plus an
> equal amount for backup. A good sized drive today is 200MB so it would
> require 500 of those drives to store and backup your photos --

Actually, the average pc drive today runs about 80 gigabytes to 200
gigabytes. I have two 120 gigabyte drives in this computer that I am using
right here. Yahoo! Web Hosting standardly gives you 2 gigabytes of data
storage with their web hosting packages and you can buy more. Did you mean
to say "giga" instead of "mega"? That would be a different story.

> and that
> doesn't include the originals if you're going to keep them or link to them

> for readability and that can be anything from 200K to a megabyte depending

> on what camera was used. Not trying to scare you - just some food for
> thought.

...And very gratefully appreciated. At this point I'm not planning on
adding pictures since we don't even know how we're going to host this thing.
On the other hand, I don't want to dismiss the idea out of hand.
Considering the way technology advances there is no reason to think that it
could never be included. Therefore I plan to keep such ideas as pictures in
the realm of "possible, but not yet".

Thanks for your input.

Tammy

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