Checking

[Keith Wilson]

Originally posted by BillArnett

I'm switching from Geditcom which is very powerful but equally ugly. One of its handy features that I wish iFamily for Tiger had is the ability to check the database for various errors and inconsistencies. It already does some of this during gedcom import but it would be good to be able to check at any time. For example, I often make typos when entering dates (eg, 1987 instead of 1897) often that leads to DOB after DOD or lifespan ridiculously long. There are many simple consistency checks like that that can be made. Other examples: child born when parents are too young or too old, marriage when too young, marriage after birth of a child, or child born after mother's death or more than 9 months after father's death.

Most of these things require a parameter to define the allowable range of the item being checked.

Of course, I can always export my database and load it into GEDitCOM to do the checking but that's ugly.

[Keith Wilson]

Hi Bill,

iFamily for Tiger already does a lot of the checks that you requested when you enter data. It also does a number of these checks when you import a Gedcom file. However there is no overall batch function to do all these checks in one validation run. I already have such a menu option in my development version but the menu option is hidden in the version that is released to users. I generally only use this function when checking databases sent to me for analysis - usually after the import of Gedcom files that contain strange relationships. GEDitCOM may have good validation rules but some genealogy apps generate Gedcom files that are, well, unacceptably awful.

Keith