FHS - Utility Options


There are several types of utility functions in the Family History System. Some, such as the ones that provide for maintaining the file name table, printer setups, or language customization, have little to do with your family information and will not be further mentioned here. Others are intended to help you maintain your files of family information in some way. Among the basic set of FHS programs there are two types of utility programs that serve this purpose:
  1. Export/Import Programs
  2. File Validation Programs

Export/Import Programs

These utility options are provided to help share information between FHS family files and files that are managed by another program.

GEDCOM Utilities
The most important type of Export/Import program from the genealogists point of view is one which conforms to the GEDCOM specification of the LDS Family History Dept. GEDCOM files are ASCII (or plain text) files which are designed to accommodate variable amounts of family information, grouped primarily into Individual and Family records which are linked together by special data items called "cross reference identifiers". Theoretically, any genealogy software which supports the GEDCOM specification should be able to transfer information from a standard GEDCOM file into its own family file where the information could be used to produce reports and charts in that software's own style.

It is important that a package of genealogy software which uses a unique family file format not only be able to import information from a standard GEDCOM into its own family files, but that it also be able to Export information from its own family file to a standard GEDCOM format file. The promise of GEDCOM is that all family information should be freely transferable between the family files of genealogy software that support GEDCOM. Unfortunately, there have been obstacles to the promise becoming a reality. But, in spite of all the difficulties, GEDCOM has made it possible to share the most common types of family information among most modern genealogy software. In addition, some utility programs have been written which use GEDCOM as their native format for information processed by the utility.

The GEDCOM Export/Import program that is part of the public portion of FHS is able to produce and process files that are compatible with the implementation of GEDCOM by the LDS Personal Ancestor File (PAF) software, v2.0 and v2.1. The information that is exported from an FHS family file are those items that are common to the family file formats of FHS and PAF. For those types of information, the PAF 2.1 style GEDCOM file is compatible with later versions of GEDCOM.

The following items provide some Sample GEDCOM files produced by FHS. All of these contain information exported for the same group of persons to simplify comparison.

[NOTE: The 97 update to FHS extended the FHS GEDCOM utility to produce additional styles of GEDCOM including ones that have customized data tags.]

MAILMERGE Utility
This program produces a "quote and comma delimited ASCII file" or "Mail Merge" file that can be read by most word processing or database programs. Information that can be exported to a MailMerge file includes the base Name record information (Name, birth/death dates and places), most recent spouse, and most recent residence address.

File Validation Options

These options are provided to check the content of an FHS family file for consistency. One program checks program maintained "pointer" fields and the other checks certain items of family information.

POINTER Validation
Within an FHS family file, the information about each individual may be stored in many different types of "segments" or "records" (see FHS Family File Description). All of these records are connected together by program maintained "pointer" fields. In addition, all relationships are recorded in the family file as a collection of pointer fields connecting Name records together. If any of these pointer fields were to become corrupted (for example, as the result of a partial disk failure or a power interruption during a file update session) then it could result in program failures when attempting to process those fields. The "pointer validation" utility, Main Menu selection F3-E-F6-1 checks for "broken" pointers and helps to eliminate them when they do occur.

DATA Validation
There are many ways in which related pieces of information in a family file could be inconsistent. For instance, a birth date may be later than a death date for an individual, or a person might be younger than a child. The DATA Validation option, Main Menu selection F3-E-F6-2, is provided to help locate problems of this type.