Original Speculation

I think that I may have come up with a reason as to why FTM has gone to the .NET database approach in FTM-2008. this is pure speculation at the present time but everything points in that direction.

 

I loaded FTM-2008 and had the Task Manager running at the same time. The cpu activity was high while loading and then dropped down. When I opened my large database it was high and remained high all the time it was loaded. I went to the people screen and system reported it was busy loading the persons in the index and indeed it would be. Then I closed the datafile and exited the program or at least tried to exit. but it was very slow as the system was busy doing something it took several seconds to finally clear out and it dawned on me that it seemed that maybe records were being time-stamped as to last access and all records in my database, well in excess of 500,000 would have to be time-stamped.

We have never seen anything from FTM where records had a time-stamp but if one considers the following then it starts to make sense.

Lets say that a time-stamp on a record exists of 3 or more stamps, 1) date created, 2) date last modified, 3) date last accessed.

The last access should only be last accessed in terms of use in any report or viewed on the screen and not that the name was in the index. However, since this is a beta version maybe they have overlooked this little side effect and all names indicate they were accessed so this requires a complete update of the database to show when the record was last accessed and from this a reason why the activity when nothing had been done to the database.

Now you can ask why would FTM want to have this time-stamp and when we look at the growth of the company and how FTM has used other media it starts to become clearer.

In 1996 when I first purchased FTM, the WFT CDROM's were available. So by purchasing the program at a relatively low cost and receiving WFT Vol 1 & 2 with the Index it was a way of getting a person hooked on how the data on the WFT CD's could assist you in your searching. This approach went on for a few years until the size of the Index became excessive and it was dropped but the WFT CD's were still produced but now you needed a subscription to Ancestry.com to see what CD the information was located on. This was when FTM created the online search icon. I still keep a working copy of FTM-11 for that purpose and all versions beyond FTM-11 did not report on any WFT CDROM trees. The more recent versions of FTM can do online searches of anything that Ancestry.com has in their databases but when you try to determine the detail, then you find that you need a subscription to that item. For a while I did not have a subscription to OneWorldTree(OWT) and this became very evident. I could not even see my own data as I would do a search for something that was in my database only and it would be reported as OWT and I was locked out. I then purchased a WorldWide membership at $300.00 USD/year and now had access to all databases including the OWT. From this, I was able to see that the OWT approach was a complete disaster unless you were a well experience researcher and a genealogist for many years. Now I find out from the list that FTM seems to be dropping the OWT method of selling access to information. FTM could give the program away and their revenue would be from sale of memberships and that sort of answers some of the flak that I have taken from a few who say "What can you expect from a program that sells for $29.95" It is not the $29.95 it is more like $350.00/year and that is not cheap!!

Now comes the approach that I think FTM are trying to use for future versions of FTM

If I could find out what names you were working on in your database then they may be the same ones that I am. In some ways Ancestry has this now but both of us may be working on a John Smith but yours is in Texas and mine is in Charlotte Co., NB and the dates of birth of the two are completely different. Well the present approach is based only on a name and is useless. However, if Ancestry had full info on what you have in your database, names, dates, locations, etc. then it would be very easy to see if my John Smith was the same as the one in your database. That is one of the main reasons for all this emphasis on locations all having the same standard format as it would make it much easier to compare electronically what you have with mine.

From this you may say that "so be it" but now if our local databases were synchronized with other databases as is the case for a large company that has worldwide offices and requires that all systems be synchronized then the picture becomes cleared as to why the structure of the database was changed from what it was previously to the Frameworks .NET approach. A more detailed explanation of the .NET Framework approach is shown at some of the following Microsoft pages.

I have a backup program for a FireLite external hard-drive and it uses Frameworks as the database and when I purchased this I questioned why a database would be used. However, when one thinks about incremental backups where my main system is searched and every file is looked at and the date that it was last modified is stored in a database then the external drive is searched the same way and the date that the files were last updated is also stored in the database. Once these two searches are completed then all that is needed is to copy the files from my main drive that have a more recent update to the external drive and the backup is done. Now think of this in terms of your genealogy database and  a copy of your genealogy database that is also housed somewhere else. It would be very simple to do this update and it may be even unknown to you. However, I don't think that FTM would sink to that level. This later approach would be like a Trojan Horse but not of the virus kind.

I use several layers of firewalls on my system. The first-level is a hardware firewall in my router, the second-level is ZoneAlarm that gives security for all incoming and outgoing transactions, and the third-level and others are from my Virus checker and Windows XP firewalls. However, since FTW must have the priveledge of communicating to the WWW then any module that hides under the guise of FTW will have the permission to send and receive data to the web at any time it wishes. This could happen very easily at boot up when there is a lot of web activity with downloads of Virus checker databases and also checking for updates from Microsoft etc. or at 4:00 AM in the morning if the system is left running and connected to the internet.

What concerns me about this approach is that I have over 44,000 living people in my database and if that info is transferred to another site where I cannot control how it is used then I will begin to question if I should even be involved with FTM and any new versions of their program. If security is maintained then I think that this might be the new wave of future programs and sure helps Ancestry.com to have a reason to sell memberships that will help others to break down those brick walls as most of the brick walls just have pieces of the puzzle that are missing but someone else has them and since they don't publish their data, you never know what they have. I like the team approach to problem solving and research where a team of people work on a problem and share their ideas and findings. That is one of the main reasons that I have so many eBooks is that when I work with a group then I can produce a book that shows what we know now and by sharing this info with the group we are able to pick up those little missing pieces that others have and when these are added it becomes clearer as to what the total picture is. By having these eBooks password protected then only those who are part of the group have access and if I set the book to non-printing then we don't end up with any hardcopy of our early findings. When things are more complete then I allow printing.

Just my thoughts on this.

Webinar- 22 Jan. 2009

Another plausible approach is that FTM is trying to get many users of their genealogy programs to use an online database approach like they have with their Ancestry.com database. On 22 Jan. 2009 a webinar on the use of MyCanvas software was demonstrated for writing a family history book. This used your database that had to be moved to your new database at Ancestry.com. Once the database was at Ancestry.com then you could use their software to produce the book. From what I could see from the demonstration, questions asked by the viewers and resulting answers from the people who presented the webinar one could see that if you had the two databases synchronized i.e. the one on your personal computer and the one at Ancestry.com then the update would be much easier. This sort of goes in the same direction as pointed out earlier prior to the time that I had seen the MyCanvas webinar. This also tends to indicate why the new FTM propgram FTM-2008 and FTM-2009 have a very powerful user interface but a very weak report generation facilities. If the reports are to be done at Ancestry.com then there is no use to have the report generation facilities built into the genealogy program that runs on you own computer. If this is the approach FTM is trying to use then I predict that it will fail as most people who use genealogy programs will select one that does local report generation and not depend on an online approach.

Webinar- 12 March 2009

Finally the reasons for the changes from FTM-2006/16 to FTM-2008 & FTM-2009 were shown clearly in the Webinar shown on 12 March 2009. This was seen in the sharing of your database with a page at Ancestry.com that would upload your database to that location. It also stated that those that already had databases at Ancestry.com would be able to use FTM-2009 to download their data from Ancestry.com to their local computer so they could do reports etc.

I have had some experience with this via one of my distant relatives who has entered her data into a database at Ancestry.com but when asked how she was going to produce any output from the database only replied that she wasn't at that stage yet but would consider it when the time came. This seemed strange that a person would spend many hours adding data to a database that had no facilities for output.

It appears that TGN had an overall purpose in the rewrite of FTM to create a program that could keep two or more databases synchronized when someone added info to anyone of them. This is similar to any company that has inventory at two or more locations and needs to know if an item exists at the other location. True, the previous versions of FTM would not have this capability and the whole database would need to be rewritten so that it would support the software that is used by industry for inventory control. However, it appears from the speed issue with FTM-2008 and FTM-2009 they overlooked the speed of this new approach as compared to FTM-2006/16.

This concept of trying to use synchronization between two or more data bases could be very useful as the Ancestry.com database allows anyone that has been invited to the database to add information and not have to go through one person as you have to do with a database on your personal computer.

If what I have just stated above is true and from the Webinar, it was indicated this way, then why have the people who did Beta-testing of FTM-2008 and FTM-2009 not indicated this as one of the reasons for the drastic change or were they sworn to secrecy??

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