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First, let me state that I am NOT a coder, and when it comes to databases, I'm basically an end-user.

Ok, with that out of the way, here's my scenario:

I have been researching old parish records in Trentino, Italy for the past 4 years. I've got close to 5,000 people "related" having utilised most of the standard family tree technologies (Ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker, Legacy 8, GEDCOM, etc.), and have catalogued another 2,000 or so. A colleague (and distant cousin) of mine has been doing similar work in a different Trentino parish, and has catalogued something like 60,000 entries of the past decade.

NOW, I am at a point where I want to CREATE an online searchable database of my research, which extends much further than my own family tree. My goal is to catalogue all the parish records for a particular parish I've been working on (and eventually the one my cousin is working on, too), between the years of 1545 (when the records start) through 1923 (when the records available to the public end), plus other records of 20th century descendants I have gathered. That's births, marriages and death records.

The end goal is to make this not only searchable to locate the records of individuals, but to be able to show the relationships of those individuals back/forth a few generations (births, marriages, deaths of parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren), so that an end-user (in an online environment) can pretty much construct their own family tree (of people from that parish, of course) relatively quickly.

The idea is also to have cross-checked all these relationships to make sure the right people are listed in the right families (trust me, it takes years to know what you're doing) and also include cross references to comments made in the margins, references to godparents, witnesses, etc. I know of no other research resource available (at least not for Trentino records) that can do all these things.

You might well ask, "Why can't they just look on your family tree?" There are loads of reasons why that's not a solution. But the primary one is that I've found that most people get overwhelmed by family trees, and they get "lost" on them. I've seen it happen again and again. I want to create something that is "chunked" so they can piece it together in a way that makes sense to the average person who is not a genealogist.

I started out organising my data on spreadsheets, which enabled me to do simple family groupings. I soon realised this was way too limited. Now I've started to use Access, but if I'm honest, I don't REALLY understand how to organise the tables for the best results during search queries. Yeah, I bought the "Dummies" book (it arrived today), but I haven't really played with data relationships yet. The thing is, I'm not even sure I want to learn the tech side, as my time is probably better used reading and translating/transcribing the records.

So here are the actual QUESTIONS I have:

  1. Do you think Access is a suitable programme with which to create the kind of online database of the kind I'm envisioning?
  2. Would MySQL be a better option?
  3. Do you think the nature of the project I am wanting to do is within the capabilities of a person who is fairly techie, but not a coder?
  4. Aside from Access or MySQL, is there another software programme that would be more fit-for-purpose? I saw another thread on this forum where amirouche mentioned two programmes he had created that could be suitable for genealogy, but I KNOW they would be way over my head.
  5. Failing all that, any of you out there want to talk about doing this project for me? I mean for money, of course. I am planning to do a crowd-funding pitch in a few months, as this is a community project (I will be donating all the research to various archive organisations).
  6. Is there anything specific I should be thinking about NOW regarding its ability to be used online?

Ok, I know that's a lot of questions, and I might sound really naive, but I really do welcome and appreciate ANY expertise and guidance you can offer.

Community
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Lynn
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2 Answers2

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  1. If you want to create online solution maybe it will be better to use another DBMS, for exemple Mysql or Postgresql
  2. In my opinion Mysql or Postgresql will be better option if you want to use relational database and create graphs with your application code. But you can try to use graph database like neo4j: http://neo4j.com/ because your data is just big graph and it's convenient to work with it as a graph. In this case application code may be simpler:)
  3. It depends on functionality. Create visual representation of some part of your graph is achievable goal even for not-coder:)
  4. Graph databases are more fit-for-purpose for such application, but I have no experience with such solution (relational databases are more common for commercial development, so I use some of RDBMS more than 10 years)
  5. It's interesting project and I can help for free with the choice of tools and the creation of architecture, maybe even simple prototype. But I have very limited free time as I work full-time as chef of software development of marketing services. So you still need code your own or find developer
  6. You should specify functional and non-functional requirements. Functional requirements can be specify as user stories. Non-functional should specify performance, accessibility, extensibility and other parameters of your application.
alexander.polomodov
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If you are already comfortable with Access you can and probably should use it as a "Front end" to MySQL or another database engine (at least in the early stages).

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-odbc/en/connector-odbc-examples-tools-with-access-linked-tables.html

I would not recommend using Access itself for the live site.

To do this well you will need to learn to code.

There are plenty of online tutorials on relational databases and SQL and web scripting languages.

This a pretty serious looking MOOC from Stanford

It depends on the time and energy you have to devote to this project.

Best wishes.

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