I’ve been working on Beyond for the past five hours or so. Worked on the database schema, realizing I’d forgotten about translations and a few other things (tags). Split the schema into four separate stages, which roughly parallel development on the program. Then I started work on a little Ruby on Rails app to create the database (via migrations) and populate it (by loading an XML file created from a GEDCOM). So far it’s working okay, and it’s giving me an opportunity to rethink some decisions.

As it stands, the current model has everything (name, gender, UID, etc.) as a characteristic which gets linked to the person via a relationship. So the People table itself only stores the ID, really. This means lots of characteristics and even more relationships. Hmm… The flexibility of the current relationships table means I can relate any two records in the database (two events, or an event and a picture, for example). But is that even a good idea? I guess my main concern is having a huge, unwieldy relationships table. We’ll have to see if the benefits of flexibility outweigh the downsides.

Anyway, now that I have some real data, I’ll be working on integrating it with the mockups (pedigree and so on). And then, after I figure out a good navigation scheme, you’ll be able to load a GEDCOM and view it online. Small steps. :)

Technorati Tags: Beyond, genealogy, Ruby on Rails, Rails, GEDCOM

Posted in Design, Development
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