Re: Numbering system
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In reply to:
Numbering system, 1700 Europe>US
9/17/00
Your genealogy program will give each person a record number. You can look people up by it and print it out with Family Origins for Windows. However, they get re-set if you export everyone to a GEDCOM and re-import them. Ahnentafl numbers change depending on who is #1 in the list.
I've seen numbers used as suffix titles in larger databases; John Smith 1, John Smith 2, etc.
27 years of commercial computer programming has taught me that as soon as you try to put meaning into a unique key you run into problems. If you want a unique number for each person in your database, start with 1 and work up in the order you entered them. You will have what we in the business call a non-meaningful unique key. You'd also be duplicating the effort your program's designer put into it. If you have siblings 104 - 110, and discover a long-lost son a year later, his number will be 4016. This upsets some people. As you keep shaking that family tree, you will find long-lost sons, families whose birth order needs revision and children who had different parents than you first recorded. That being the nature of the great chase, any meaningful numering scheme you use is doomed, unless you re-number everyone as the need arises.
If you want a number to distinguish between your 50 people all named John Smith, the birth year would work. It would be what we call a meaningful, non-unique key.