Thursday, July 23, 2009

Comparing Genealogy Software - Legacy Family Tree 7 - Part 1

One of the genealogy software programs I'm using is Legacy Family Tree 7. In this series of posts, I will be comparing how Legacy Family Tree 7 performs relative to What I Want in a Family Tree Program and relative to Family Tree Maker 2009 and to RootsMagic 4.

My first test is to upload both a native FTM 16 file (if possible) and a GEDCOM file to Legacy Family Tree. I am using the same FTM 16 database, and a GEDCOM file created from it, to perform these tests.

Legacy Family Tree 7 permits uploads from Personal Ancestral File Versions 2 through 5, Ancestral Quest Versions 2 and 3.x, and from a GEDCOM file. It cannot upload from a Family Tree Maker file.

I uploaded the GEDCOM, and the screen below summarizes the data file characteristics:



The Legacy Family Tree 7 file contains:

* 38,420 individuals
* 15,129 families
* 298 sources

The GEDCOM file took about 10 minutes to upload.

The Legacy Family Tree file is 76.964 mb in size in my computer file folders.

The number of families (15,129), and number of sources (298), in the Legacy Family Tree 7 file are different from the numbers found in the Family Tree Maker 2009 (15,121 and 1,466) file uploaded via GEDCOM. The number of Individuals is the same. Also, FTM 2009 indicated 1,466 sources, not 298. Hmmm, I wonder why the difference? I think that I have many more source citations than 1,466, but don't think that I have that many master sources. Obviously, FTM 16, FTM 2009 and Legacy Family Tree 7 are counting source things differently!

Because this was a GEDCOM file upload, any images that I had in my FTM 16 database did not import into the program.

Finally, the file size of the Legacy Family Tree 7 file (76.964 mb) is somewhat smaller than the Family Tree Maker 2009 file size (82.468 mb).
UPDATED 9 p.m. to change the number of families - I didn't read the number correctly on a small screen!

1 comment:

Dave Berdan said...

Randy,

I was excited to see your comments about Legacy. I am one of the developers of the program so I thought I would make a few comments about your GEDCOM import test.

A GEDCOM file is made up of several different kinds of "Records." These include individual records, family records, source records, and others. When Legacy imports a GEDCOM file it looks through the file and counts how many individuals, families, and sources are included. These are the actual counts that are shown to the user.

If you opened your FTM GEDCOM file in a text editor and counted the family records (a family record starts with "0 @Fxxxx@ FAM") you would find that there were 15,129 of them. So, the question isn't where Legacy came up with an extra 8 families, the question is where is FTM hiding them? They exported 15,129 family records but within FTM they are only showing that there are 15,121.

Master sources are also exported as records into a GEDCOM file. Your GEDCOM file included 298 master source records. This is the number that Legacy shows. These master sources can, of course, be cited many times each throughout your file but Legacy doesn't display the total number of citations when importing. I would suspect that with a file containing over 38 thousand people, as yours does, you would indeed have many more than the 1466 sources that FTM is reporting. The number is way to high for the master source count and way too low for a total citation count. You will have to figure that one out with FTM...

As far as the images go, most genealogy programs include the full file path names for each media file linked to events within your file. This lets the importing program, like Legacy, relink and display them as a matter of course. But, for some reason, FTM does not include these links in their exported GEDCOM files. A shame.

I hope this has answered the questions you raised.