On Thursday 02 February 2006 09:07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote: > On Thursday 02 February 2006 09:05, Michael Glaesemann wrote: > >For people I'm more or less stumped. I can't think of a combination > >of things that I know I'll be able to get from people that I'll want > >to be able to add to the database. Starting off we'll have at least > >7,000 individuals in the database, and I don't think that just family > >and given names are going to be enough. I don't think we'll be able > >to get telephone numbers for all of them, and definitely aren't going > >to be getting birthdays for all. > > > >I'm very interested to hear what other use in their applications for > >holding people and companies. > > I've been thinking long and hard about the same thing myself, in > developing my genealogy database. For identification of people, there > seems to be no realistic alternative to an arbitrary ID number. > > Still, I'm struggling with the basic concept of /identity/, eg. is the > William Smith born to John Smith and Jane Doe in 1733, the same William > Smith who marries Mary Jones in the same parish in 1758? You may never > really know. Still, collecting such disparate "facts" under the same ID > number, thus taking the identity more or less for granted, is the modus > operandi of computer genealogy. Thus, one of the major objectives of > genealogy research, the assertion of identity, becomes totally hidden > the moment that you decide to cluster disparate evidence about what may > actually have been totally different persons, under a single ID number. > > The alternative is of course to collect each cluster of evidence under a > separate ID, but then the handling of a "person" becomes a programmer's > nightmare. > > I have been writing about my genealogy data model here: > <url:http://solumslekt.org/forays/blue.php> The model has been slightly > modified since I wrote this; due to what I perceive as 'gotchas' in the > PostgreSQL implementation of table inheritance, I have dropped the > 'citations' table. Besides, I've dropped some of the surrogate keys, > and more will follow. I really should update this article soon. > > I should perhaps be posting this under another subject, but I feel that > beneath the surface, Michael's problem and my own are strongly related. There is also the problem that a name can change. People change names by deed-poll, and also women can adopt a married name or keep their old one. All in all an ID is about the only answer. David
