Genealogical Data Files, GEDCOM, XML, etc.

16th September 2008, 08:11 am

So, I’ve been thinking about how we store our genealogical data recently. Every genealogy program has its own format and some programs can’t read every format out there. It can be a real pain to exchange data. Every program seems to have its own flavor of GEDCOM and the format is somewhat limited anyway.

I think XML is a perfect solution as it is portable and extensible. There are sever proposals for XML-based formats, but they don’t seem to be getting anywhere. GEDCOM 6.0, for example, uses XML, but it appears to be dormant at the moment. GRAMPS apparently has its own version of XML and I will be trying out GRAMPS (again) soon and posting a review (I spend most of my time in Linux anyway).

Anyway, I know I’m not the only one who gets frustrated when I need to share data among several different programs. It’s about time we come up with a modern, flexible, portable format for sharing complete genealogical data.

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