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Warren Tabareas

Is this program lineage-linked or event based?

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Hi Sales,

 

I am looking at collecting and document my family history and before I commit to a program (although I like the spreadsheet view of data on this program) is this program lineage-linked or event based?

 

How important is this difference?

 

Thank you

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Hello Warren,

 

I am not "Sales" but simply a long-time satisified user of TMG, and a retired computer systems analyst.

 

You asked: is this program lineage-linked or event based?

In my opinion the most accurate answer would be "both". Because TMG is so incredibly flexible, which you call it depends upon how you use the program, and how you choose to view your data. A purist would probably say it is primarily event-based, but it definitely also has lineage-link features.

 

You also asked: How important is this difference?

I think it is only important if that nature of the program restricts what you wish to do. I think most people don't care how the internals of a program work. What is usually more important is whether the program has the capabilities to do what they want. I believe you will find TMG has all the capabilities, and more, that you will want.

 

But to try to answer in more "database" terminology detail, the program is a true relational database using what TMG calls "tags" that are linked to "people" entities. Tags can have a one-tag to many-people relationship, but one or two of these people are linked to a tag in a special "Principal" way. Each parent/child relationship is a single tag linking two "Principal" people: one parent to one child. A child can be linked with an unlimited number of these relationship tags to multiple parents, but only one tag is identified by the user as the Primary "mother" relationship and one tag the Primary "father" relationship for the purposes of genetic and ancestral relationships and reports. Of course a parent can be linked with an unlimited number of relationship tags to multiple children. (And linkages to parents do not require the two parents to be married.) Each spousal relationship is a single tag simply linking two "Principal" people: the two spouses, but can have an unlimited number of other people also able to be linked to this single "relationship" (or is marriage an event?). And a person can have an unlimited number of these spousal relationship tags to link to multiple spouses. Other tags can be associated with one or two "Principals" to that "event", but with an unlimited number of other people also able to be linked to this single "event". And a person can have an unlimited number of tags.

 

Repositories (e.g. libraries) are separately defined entities, as are sources (e.g. books, census records, etc.). Repositories and sources have a many-to-many relationship, but one repository is designated as Primary for a given source. Sources and tags have a many-to-many relationship. A tag can have many sources and a source can be cited to many tags, with specific citation information associated with a link of a tag to a source.

 

And then there are the many other program features, like extremely flexible reports, flexible structure to source citations, flexible narratives based on the data entered in tags, etc., etc. (Did I mention it is flexible? :lol: )

 

For a more complete overview of TMG's database concepts, I suggest you review Terry Reigel's web page here which goes in to more details. Terry is another long-time user as well as the author of a Primer to using TMG.

 

Hope this answers your immediate questions?

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