Problem

Many persons in my database have multiple Birth events created from different sources; likewise for other vital facts. Even though I may have marked one as Primary, the others still clutter reports: narratives look like repetitious gobbledygook; calendars have the same person multiple times, even on the same day. I want to clean up the publishing mess without losing the evidence.

This is especially the case for databases downloaded from an Ancestry Member Tree where events are generated by accepting or assigning a source and choosing to make the data into an alternate fact because it varies in some way from an existing fact.

Solution

Many report settings in RootsMagic have an option to include or exclude private events. I could reduce report clutter by setting the non-Primary Birth events to Private without losing the data that led to their creation. The Primary event should have whatever consideration and logic went into it being deemed the most accurate. I haven’t set a Primary in every case where my database has multiples so I want two things:

1. A batch process that sets Private all the non-Primary events of a set having a Primary.
2. A list of all the sets of multiple events that do not have a Primary so I can follow up.

Implementation

BMD_private_multiples.sql 2020-02-15 Click to view; right-click to download.

The above SQLite script builds a series of temporary SQLite Views (stored queries), does the possible privatising and exits displaying the View “BMDmultstofix” which lists the persons needing follow up attention to set Primary one of the plural (multiple) events. The Views are all in memory and are lost when the SQLite manager exits the database.

Usage

The script executes very quickly on small files so it is possible to keep the SQLite manager open on the database and to re-execute the script at intervals while editing the database in RootsMagic. One could simply set the Primary event out of a group of multiple events for a person in RM’s Edit Person screen and then run the script to set the others Private or manually set them. Re-running the script will shrink the list needing Primaries by those you have set.

For family-type events (Marriage), the View “BMDmultstofix” will list both spouses separately. When the Marriage event is set to Primary on either spouse, the two separate listings will go.

Possible Enhancements

Colour Coding

The list of persons needing attention could be quite large, depending how assiduously you have been setting the Primary flag and the number of people and events in your database. So it might be nice to extend the last query or even last View to pick up the color code for each person which could be used to sort or filter the list.

Private as Default

Instead of privatising only those non-Primary events in groups having a Primary, another approach would be to privatise all non-Primaries. That would really clean out the reports and require user editing to get the desired outputs. This may be preferable.

Enhanced Version

BMD_private_multiples2.sql 2020-02-16

Both of the hypothesized enhancements have been incorporated. To ‘fix’ a group of multiples, one of the events must be set Primary and un-Privatised or another event added that consolidates one’s research into an assertion. By default, a new event is not Private and need only be made Primary.

In SQLiteSpy, any column can be sorted by clicking on the heading. Some other software, SQLite Expert is one example, also support filtering by column. These tools enable grouping color code or by surname without having to modify the script or write your own custom query of BMDmultsToFixClr view.

Screenshot