Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Can we really build a Better GEDCOM?

The genealogy blogs are alive with the wonderful news that a group has formed to build a Better GEEDCOM, spearheaded by Greg Lamberson, DearMYRTLE and Russ Worthington.  You can read the press release at http://bettergedcom.wikispaces.com/Press+Releases.

The highlight, for me, is these two paragraphs:

"The initial project will be to develop an update/replacement for the de facto GEDCOM standard based on input from end users and developers world-wide. Long-term efforts will include standards for the sharing of genealogical information over the internet, for example.

"A key distinction in this effort from those that have proceeded it is our intention to be a broad-based community development project with an emphasis on codification of our work with international standards bodies such as ISO and IETF. Broad-based community support and international recognition are central tenets of this effort. Please have a look around at http://bettergedcom.wikispaces.com/  and share your expertise so that we may succeed together in solving the GEDCOM problems for researchers and developers."

I sincerely hope that this happens.  If you, or someone you know, has an interest in this project and skills that can help the group, please volunteer and sign up at the Build a Better GEDCOM website.  It's free.

Greg Lamberson has put together a Wiki in order to coordinate the effort.  Please read all of the pages - the Project Goals,  Data Models, the Sandbox, and the Discussions. 

The items that I found of most interest was the article defining the current GEDCOM Data Model and the GenTech Genealogical Data Model.   As many veteran genealogists know, a similar effort was started in the late 1990's that resulted in the GenTech Genealogical Data Model but did not get as far as creating a replacement for the current GEDCOM model.

2 comments:

DearMYRTLE said...

I think the link to the press release is pointing to Family Tree University. Here's the press release URL:

http://bettergedcom.wikispaces.com/Press+Releases

Randy Seaver said...

Thanks, Myrt. I fixed it.

The most obvious errors are sometimes overlooked, aren't they? I think I had a diaper to change right then - it's Audrey's fault!