3 replies to this topic

[Jerry Bryan]

Two or three weeks ago there was a thread of interest on RM's Facebook page concerning media that was described as missing. The user was a relatively new RM user, but he had an IT background and some experience with SQL. He had installed an SQLite manager and was trying to look at his RM database and find out what happened to his missing media. Even though he knew SQL, he had difficulty in figuring out the schema for RM's SQLite database.

I volunteered to help and we took the discussion offline. I wrote him some SQL and finally he sent me a copy of his database to look at myself. It turned out that his "missing" media wasn't missing at all. Rather, it was tagged to citations that were linked to primary names. The media had come into his database from ancestry, where the primary name can have citations and media. As as been discussed before on these forums, RM7's database provides for storage of a note, images, and citations for the primary name but none of this is visible through the RM7 user interface.This problem creates heartburn for TreeShare, and we already know that this problem has been addressed in RM8.

 

A couple of things surprised me about his database. One was that you actually can see the "missing" media in Lists>Media gallery, and you can even see the citations. I was not expecting to be able see the media which was tagged to citations for primary names from the RM7 user interface. Normally, when you look at media in Lists>Media gallery when the media is for citations, you can see what the citation is attached to. In the case of these media files, you can see the citation in the RM7 user interface but you can't see what the citation is linked to.

 

The second surprise is that many of these media files had a file name but had a null file path. I don't know what happened. I assume that TreeShare lost part of the tags because the citations were for the primary name.

 

The third surprise was the for a very few of the media files, the file path was not null but it did not start with a drive letter. It's almost like RM (or really TreeShare) was trying to use a relative file path rather than an absolute file path, even though RM7 doesn't support relative file paths.

 

It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out in RM8.

 

Jerry

 

[TomH]

Your first set of surprises was unsurprising to me. And I've learned how to recognise a media tag for a citation for the Primary Name. We first tackled the issue in 2012. https://sqlitetoolsf...eal-and-revert/

Your second and third surprises are novel to me. I've rarely used TreeShare and have not experienced those outcomes. It sounds more a sporadic than systemic issue.

[strathglass]

Jerry - Does this mean with RM7 we should avoid use of Treeshare to sync facts with images (or any facts?) from Ancestry to RM if the facts are linked to the primary name?

If so, how on Ancestry can we tell that a fact is "linked to the primary name"?

[Jerry Bryan]

Jerry - Does this mean with RM7 we should avoid use of Treeshare to sync facts with images (or any facts?) from Ancestry to RM if the facts are linked to the primary name?

If so, how on Ancestry can we tell that a fact is "linked to the primary name"?

 

It's really sources and images that are linked to the primary name in ancestry, not facts. Sources or images are linked there on ancestry if you link them there on ancestry.

 

If you use TreeShare to download sources and images that are linked to the primary name in ancestry and if you download to RM7, the sources and data will be downloaded into RM7 properly. But you will not be able to access them from the RM7 user interface. According to the demos we have seen of the RM8 user interface, RM8 will allow you to access those sources and images that are linked to the primary name directly from the RM8 user interface.

 

So you can go ahead and download now. But you won't be able to access sources and images that are linked to the primary name until RM8 is released.

 

Jerry