Geneology Template

[Honey]

Is there a geneology template available for Access?? Any help would be
greatly appreciated!!

Honey

 

[Allen Browne]

I'm not aware of one I could recommend. You may find one by searching, but
you are more likely to find dedicated geneology software.

Geneological information is not the simplest thing in the world. If you are
only tracing biological parents, this kind of thing might work:
Self Joins: tables that look themselves up (Pedigrees example)
at:
http://allenbrowne.com/ser-06.html

But if you are trying to record the full gamut of human relationships, you
will need to also handle foster parents, adopted parents, step-parents,
half-siblings, and so on. The relationships between people can get quite
complex, e.g. where someone marries their 2nd cousin so there are actually
multiple hereditary paths between individuals.

 

[Honey]

Allen,

You are the greatest. That example is the exact purpose that I needed this
- to manage horse pedigrees!!! Thanks So Much!!!

Honey

 

[Honey]

I need help!!! I have coppied your pedigree example being very carefull in
creating the joins, and when I run the query I get a "Type mismatch in
expression" error message. I can't figure out how to get past this. Any
suggestions???

Honey

 

[Allen Browne]

In table design view, do you have these fields:
ID AutoNumber
SireID Number
DamID Number

In the Relationships window (Tools menu), did you add 3 copies of this table
(Access calls the other two TblHorses_1 and TblHorses_2), and create a
relationship with the Referential Integrity box checked from:
TblHorses_1.SireID => TblHorses_ID
TblHorses_2.DamID => TblHorses_ID

If so, try with just 2 copies of the table in a query.
Get that working, and add the 3rd one. And so on.

Post back if you are still stuck.

 

[Honey]

Hi Allen,

I got the joins to work, but I had to join the Sire's Name field with the
Name field of the Sire's Table. Joining the Sire's ID field to the ID field
in the Sire's Table would not work. However, I would rather use names. Now
my problem is that I have to track 5 generations to be able to calculate an
inbreeding coeffiecient and when I created the fifth generation in my query,
I got a message that it was to complex. Is there another way around this??

Thank you for all your help
Honey

 

[Allen Browne]

Access only handles 4 generations as in the example.

You could try using that query as in input "table" for another query, add
the tables for the previous generation, and see if it works.

An alternative would be to use DLookup() expressions for the previous
generation. That's going to be slow and you could have problems with
resources.

Another alternative would be to introduce a temporary table to write those 4
generations to. You clear out any existing data in the the temp table with:
DELETE FROM MyTempTable;
and then convert your exising pedigree query into an Append query (Append on
Query menu.) You could then create a query using the temp table and the
extra instances of the original to go back another generation.

If you want a more complex approach, here's some reading:
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/001020/celko.shtml
http://www.dbmsmag.com/9603d06.html
http://www.dbmsmag.com/9604d06.html
http://www.dbmsmag.com/9605d06.html
http://www.dbmsmag.com/9606d06.html

Using the ID should have worked. If you use the name, hopefully you won't
find the same name turning up in different generations.

 

[John W. Vinson]

Using the ID should have worked. If you use the name, hopefully you won't
find the same name turning up in different generations.

.... like my father John W. Vinson or his father John W. Vinson.

To be fair I'm John Wilmot, and they were John Walker Jr. and John Walker Sr.
respectively, but you certainly cannot count on that in geneologies!