Enabling the Distributed Family Tree

This is the official research blog for the Distributed Family Tree, an open network of genealogical data and metadata.  In a nutshell, the big idea is that we can combine all available genealogical information on the Internet into a single distributed network.  The foundation for this network is the substance of the Master's Thesis that I am currently working on.

New! Free! SPARQL, PGVAgent, and Agent Writing Guide

by Hilton on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 | 582 Views

I have many good things to share with you today…

SPARQL
As I mentioned previously, the Good Doctor is currently teaching a database class and wants to expose his students to RDF.  We’ve talked about having them download Genesis and install a plug-in that allows them to perform SPARQL queries.  Well, said plug-in is now available on the update site!  Instructions for installing it, a reference to the data model currently being used in Genesis (not just subject to change, but guaranteed), and some example queries can be found on the wiki.

Here’s a screenshot, showing two individuals, their birthdates, their partners, and the PGV website they came from:

SPARQL Feature

Cases like these will really benefit from the forthcoming record linkage agent.

PGVAgent
PGVAgent 0.0.23 is now available on the update site.  It retrieves the list of sites to search from both the DFT registry and the PhpGedView registry.

Agent Writing Guide
And finally, I’ve written a rudimentary Agent Writing Guide on the wiki for anyone who wants to, well, write an agent for Genesis.  I can’t promise the API won’t change, but I will promise to help anyone who wants to try their hand at it to the best of my ability!

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  1. Permalink to this comment crex on March 21st, 2007 at 4:20 am

    About the agent. Where are the resources kept and where in Genesis is it decided which agent to use on each (re)source? I’m not sure I understand the feature thing. Perhaps this is where a list of relevant resources (URL:s) is stored!? Do each agent keep track of it’s own resources?

    You are also going to make pedigree and ancestor views (when you have the time) I presume!? When the plain text GEDCOM agent is written you could use Genesis as a regular GEDCOM viewer for online (and perhaps offline) files :)

    Keep up the good work!

  2. Permalink to this comment Hilton on March 21st, 2007 at 8:34 am

    All excellent questions. I’ll try to elaborate on them quite a bit more in the Agent Writing Guide today.

    As for pedigree/ancestor views and plain text GEDCOM agent, yes, as soon as I get some time (which is becoming my byword it seems!). At the moment I’m busy with this SPARQL side-project for the Good Doctor. Then I’d like to make some more progress with the main goals of the thesis project itself. So I don’t think those views or agent will be coming along too soon.

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