Behold Database Plans - Categorized in: General Discussion

I have used Family Tree Builder for many years and like it a lot. My only concern with your plan, if I understand it correctly, is that MyHeritage has a limit of people you can add under the free Basic Plan and it is very small. That would preclude the possibility of uploading my Family Tree Data back to MyHeritage.

I definitely like the idea of being able to read the Family Tree Builder database with Behold, and vice versa.

Keep up the good work!

Hi Louis,

SQLite is a good choice, My Heritage is not. I have a subscription to their data plan, and found that for Europe, most of their records come from FamilySearch, where they can be accessed for free, and for the English speaking countries, Ancestry and FindMyPast have better data, which can both be accessed with subscription plans that can be canceled on a monthly basis, unlike My Heritage. Tying Behold to My Heritage would be way too restrictive for me, also, because most users' on-line trees are a mess.

If you choose SQLite, connecting to the RootsMagic database is a much better choice, assuming that you can solve the legalities. I say that, because RootsMagic can connect to Ancestry, FamilySearch, FindMyPast, and My Heritage, so that users have a far bigger choice, including the unified tree on FamilySearch. Moreover, for those who want their personal tree on-line, Ancestry has no size limit in their free plan, and a much nicer app for Android and iOS too. And although there is no official documentation for RootsMagic's database, there is an unofficial one on

https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/

I looked at their data model, and found that it's very good, and has full support for EE style citations, which is far better than the convoluted and proprietary URLs of My Heritage. And assuming that you don't plan to support all 40 languages supported by My Heritage, sticking to the English language of RootsMagic is not a real restriction for your audience.

Regards,

Enno

Louis, I agree with Enno on all points. SQLite and RootsMagic would both be good choices, and a lot of the groundwork has already been done with SQLite Tools for RootsMagic. Like Family Tree Builder, there is also a free version of RootsMagic, which has very few limitations. I just don't know about the legal implications, since Behold is a commercial product, while SQLite Tools for RootsMagic is not, but the RootsMagic owner is pretty approachable.

Whichever direction you go, please keep in mind that while both Family Tree Builder and RootsMagic have problems implementing GEDCOM 5.5.1, Family Tree Builder's are more serious: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qj9ta3dcs03w9h7/FTM-GEDCOM-Crosswalk.xlsx?dl=0

Keith

Louis,
Of course, if you choose to use someone else’s db design, then you’ll be beholden (sorry, I just had to say that) to them for db design changes. You will have to adapt your db to their structure when they make changes.

That said, I know how hard it is to design a solid, fast db and it would be a shame to let someone else’s hard work go to waste, providing you can get the OK. Using a developed db structure would save you hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of design and testing time.

I’ve been a RM user for quite a while and like what Bruce has done with the software.

Rich

Hi Louis,

It's true that I don't like EE, because it's too much work to translate to all languages that we support with Gramps, but I assume that your main audience is in English speaking countries, for which it can work very well. And if EE support benefits your audience, it's good for Behold too, isn't it? I also know that in RootsMagic you can define your own citation templates, which is something that you can't do in FTB.

With RootsMagic's TreeShare, you can download a whole tree from Ancestry, and upload a new one too. That would be good enough for me, as long as I have the discipline to make all updates in one place, because then, I can always refresh one by replacing it with the other.

Also, most independent programs that I know, not FTB, can download any reasonable number of generations from FamilySearch. I often use RootsMagic for that myself, and then move the new data to Gramps via GEDCOM. Bulk uploads to FamilySearch are not allowed, I think, for a good reason. It's a shared tree, like Geni's, and FamilySearch things that blocking bulk uploads is a good way to protect its integrity. It's true though that RootsMagic can't merge data downloaded from FamilySearch, but I bet that you can do that once you decide to support the FamilySearch API yourself, which is like you say a decision that may be independent from the database choice. I do think however that, once that citation elements are included in GEDCOM X, they will match better with the RM data model than with FTB's.

I just looked at the My Heritage API for sources and citations, and found that although they have more fields than the GEDCOM standard has, it looks quite limited to me. And for me, one thing in particular is nasty, and that is that the link field in both source and citation is defined as a link to the source on My Heritage! And to me, that looks like vendor lock-in. It does of course not mean that if you use that link in the Behold data model, that it must point to My Heritage too, but you may be forced to provide a My Heritage link if you upload data nevertheless.

I've thought of recommending Gramps' SQLite too, but there's a problem with that, because we currently store Python objects in that, so you can't read that. We have a normalized SQLite export, but that's not a model that Gramps can work with. It's only supported for import and export.

Model wise, I think that RootsMagic's database can support all fields used by My Heritage, so if you connect to My Heritage, you can still download and store anything you want.

When you tie Behold to FTB, simple access to on-line services will be limited to My Heritage, and for me, that would't be a good thing, because of the things that I mentioned earlier, like source links always going to My Heritage. It means that, if you download data with such links, these links will only work as long as you pay the My Heritage fees, and that does look like a tie to me.

Please note that I will stick with Gramps no matter what, unless you find a volunteer, not me, to translate the new Behold to Dutch. And for me, Gramps is better than FTB, because it's independent.

Enno

You're probably right that FTB's database is simpler than RM's, and maybe citation elements are not a good idea for Behold anyway, because they don't look natural in an editable everything report, and only make things more complicated for your intended audience. Formatted citations actually work pretty well if you keep them simple, and there is no need for translations.

I am no programmer, but for what it is worth, I will state my simple opinion. The best thing about Behold is it is a unique and different program that is like no other. Don't lose that. I have been using Family Historian lately and it does a good job of using a GEDCOM file as it's main "database". It also works with My Heritage and FindMyPast. I like the smart match idea but I would ultimately prefer a program with no online features at all to hold my family data. Just too much grabbing info from here and there and merging it in with the data one has with little effort to cite the original documents. I have found lots of sources on Family Search that only reference an Ancestry source that I can't see because I don't have a subscription. A lot of good a source is if one cannot look at it themselves. That said, I did have a subscription to My Heritage for a year, and I did find it well worth it even though it was a bit pricey. I does, as another user said, use Family Search databases a lot. I was disappointed most of their own transcriptions do not have any images to the original source. Finally, I see SQLite used a great deal and if you use that, I can't see too much going wrong in terms of other programs.