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Question re orphan citations #rm8

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Quote from Charles Banks on 2022-04-21, 6:24 am

So, I have 87 Sources that all a Source Name of 'Source #1' or 'Source #22.  All the citations linked to them have no name or additional information.  Two people who I've checked so far have additional sources tied to the same event.  Should all citations have a name?  Here is what I'd like to do.  How do I find the events from the results of this query

SELECT st.SourceID, st.name, c.CitationID from SourceTable st
LEFT JOIN CitationTable C USING(SourceID)
where st.SourceID < 86

Seemingly more sematic confusion. Up to now, I've understood your questions to be about "orphan citations", which to my mind is equivalent to a 'headless' citation, one with no master source. Hence, my suggested queries have started with the CitationTable or CitationLinkTable, looking up (or left) toward the NameTable or down (or right) toward the EventTable or other OwnerType. Now your query is starting at the 'head' of Sources, the SourceListTable, and can only answer the questions:

  1. Which Master Sources have no Master Citations? A Master Source cannot be orphaned; it can have no master citation and, if it does have one, it can be unused by any Person, Name, Family (Couple), Event. None of its master citations can be orphaned.
  2. Where are the Master Citations of this Master Source used? You say you want to see Events but I think you also need to see the other three use types (OwnerType) and not just their row from their respective primary table but also the name(s) of the Person, Family, FactType...

Doesn't RM8 already answer those for you?

The RM8 Sources window gives you a count of the number of master citations for each master source and by clicking on that count gives you a list of its master citation names and the number of each master citation's uses under the Used column. If that number is 0, the master citation is unused, you can readily see what's in it in its Edit Citation panel and decide whether to delete it. Or, having selected a Master Source in the Sources window, click on the "Used" field at the bottom of the Edit Source pane to jump to the list of 'uses' showing the Date, Event and Name of person(s).

Should all citations have a name?

Not if you avoid using the function "Merge all duplicate citations". It fails to check for differences between citations outside of the CitationTable, such as Media and WebTags which may be different, only one of each being preserved in the merged result.

It may be desirable to have CitationNames that do differentiate them for both avoidance of such disastrous merging and for navigational assistance when working in the Sources window or doing Searches.

There is probably also the same issue with "Merge all duplicate sources". If you have a bunch named "Source #22", are the textual fields for the Master Source different? If they are the same, is their different media tagged to their Master Source? If everything is the same, you might as well merge them but I have to wonder. though, if they provide any evidence for anything!

It will take me time to completely read this plus I just found page two from the other post.  Kevin and I have been using Google Chat to communicate back and forth.  Let me know if you want to go that route instead of choking your blog.

I apologize if I have been confusing.  When I start this, I had no idea if anyone would respond so I crammed a lot into it.  Here is the bottom line:

I wrote an application in C# to help me eliminate duplicate facts.  Kevin provided me with a lot of SQL statements to get me going.  Besides deleting facts/events in mass, from one person, I can also trace a fact to an event | an event to a source | a source to a citation.  I discovered a lot of duplicates went to citations that showed they were a record for another person.  That lead me to wanting to write a query which would take me from a citation to its source | the source to an event | event to a fact | then to a person.

Since I had deleted events using sql and not RM8 I am sure I orphaned a lot of citations (and perhaps sources).  In my haste to post a question for help I melded the two together.  You are correct, they are two separate topics but I never thought I'd find someone as helpful as you and as detailed.  I am so glad to have found you.  I'd be more than happy to share my email address and take this off the blog.

C#! Aha! I developed my RMtrix utility in Visual Studio C# over 10 years ago. I'm not a programmer and suffered many headaches getting it going. As I haven't touched VS since maybe  8 years ago, I'm probably back at square 1, not that I was many squares beyond.

I'd be happy to help without too much involvement (I risk getting engrossed), especially if you share your application freely to the public, as I did for RMtrix, including source code. As for the comms channel, I'd prefer it to be open in the same spirit but I agree that this forum is not optimal. GitHub? Again, I'm not well-versed in developers' channels but have some acquaintance with it.

Hi Tom,

I'm still going through all of this.  Kevin and I like google chat because we can leave messages for each other and respond on our own time.  The times when we are "talking" back and forth are always mutually agreed to.   I am always very respectful of other people's time.  Not sure if my application will be ready for prime time, it was meant just for me.  If you want to hit me up and start something I'm at xxxxx.  I trust you can delete this but, if not that's ok.  No problem

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