Re: [Gramps-users] Best way to compare two genealogies?

[Nicholas R. <np...@bo...>]

On Mon, 2009-10-26 at 13:41 +0100, doug wrote:
> Duncan Lithgow wrote:
> > Since GRAMPS doesn't yet really help me compare two genealogies what
> > do people suggest I use. I know there are lots of tools but I'd love
> > to hear some recommendations.
> > 
> > My only thoughts of a gramps solution would be to import both
> > databases and then run the tool looking for duplicates. I can then
> > write down the IDs of the duplicates.
> > 
> > Duncan
> > 
> I'd be interested too to hear what others do.
> I guess it'll depend on what aim one has in mind - when checking an 
> external limited genealogy (say less than 100) for importing, I've 
> exported a relevant section of my main genealogy; then as you do, 
> imported both the external and the exported section into a trial 
> database and looked for duplicates.
> where there seemed to be genuine duplicates, I used 'Compare and Merge', 
> then followed up 'Relationship' to see if it resulted in any glaring 
> discrepancies. Sometimes it did; then I had either to do a lot of 
> unscrambling on the mixed database or else scrap it entirely - but the 
> original database was safe, of course.
> 
> Doug
> 

Hi

This sounds a fascinating programming exercise! Are you limiting the
comparison to 'structure' i.e. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat
Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren and so on. Or are you
looking to fit where there are missing people, branches, errors,
identify missing data such as dates?

Intuitively, I'd say write a utility outside gramps that would parse
each genealogy and then attempt to compare the two using tree-based
algorithms.

I wonder, though, if there are tools on the genesreunited site for doing
something like this? I haven't looked, but it would seem to be something
their site should be doing as a matter of course to reunite the genes!

Nick