Re: [Gramps-users] Suggestion: GRAMPS db conversion util?

[Benny M. <ben...@gm...>]

2012/9/10 James Sherring <jam...@ya...>

> I think that there are a couple of important principles here that are
> worth elaborating. My two cents below.
>
> Principle/Use case "Gramps continues to work after all automated updates":
> A user has Gramps installed on an active system, but doesn't use Gramps
> for some time (possibly years), with multiple Gramps software updates
> during that time. Regardless of
> any automated software updates, a user should be able to open their active
> Gramps database. The principle is that automated software updates must not
> cause something to stop working.
>
> Solution option 1:
> I think that an automated software upgrade should also upgrade the working
> DB. I suppose Gramps doesn't do that? There will be an issue with shared
> software Vs user DBs.
> Gramps should also support opening and converting at least the most recent
> previous database format.
>

> Solution option 2:
> Gramps must support opening all old database formats. This may require
> considerable complexity after multiple major database structure changes.
>

This works in Gramps withing what we support.
For example:
To open a gramps 1.x db file, you need gramps 2.1.x
To open a 2.x db file, you need gramps 3.0.x

So current gramps 3.4.x supports the db format since 3.0. It can normally
import _all_ xml .gramps file.

The main problem for a community project like gramps is testing that this
really keeps working.

I am not aware of people who could not open an old gramps file or database,
on questions to the users list, they have always been helped. People did
loose information due to deleting files or disk corruption, which is not
something we can fix. To avoid the problems of people deleting needed
database files, we deprecated the old .grdb format and hide in current
Gramps where the database is stored. The reasoning here is that this should
make people wonder where their data is stored, so as to know how to backup.
Or they look in the menu of gramps and see the backup entry, or they look
up the documentation and see there is a database directory they can back up.

If people enter a lot of information, and don't ask the above question, I
don't think a program can do anything to have the data save over long time
periods. The OS would be a better solution then, like time machine on OS X.


> Principle/Use case "Gramps can open any valid back-up/XML export":
> If I create a backup or XML export from Gramps, then I should be
> guaranteed that anyone can open this file forever - or at least for the
> lifetime of the Gramps project :)
> I may take a break from family history for a number of years. Or I may die
> and leave my research as digital media that is accessed after decades.
> The alternative is to always export as GEDCOMS for long-term backups
> (which is probably sensible anyway on a periodic basis).
> Is the Gramps file itself the research artifact, or just a tool to produce
> other artifacts to be preserved? I think the former.
>

Xml keeps on working. You can download old xml from the code repository to
verify this.
The .gramps is the thing to keep. We don't store custom tags with
information not in the GEDCOM standard but stored in gramps, paf and others
do, as there is no guarantee anyway they can be read by anybody else than
gramps.

Benny

>
>
> It would be useful to have a project stance on these - any comments?
>
> James
>