The RootsMagic 8 database structure has seen a few changes from RM7 and one of these is that more objects can “own” other objects in the data. A task can have media, citations and web tags for example.
To achieve this many tables have an OwnerType field and an OwnerID field and the owner type is consistent so for example 0 in owner type always means the owner is a person and the owner id is the person record number (RIN).
In order to write code against this structure I have produced the following chart where items in the left hand column can be the owner and the items across the top are owned.
| Owner Type Value | Owner Type | Can Own URL | Can Own Place | Can Own Place Detail | Can Own Media | Can Own Task | Can Own Address | Can Own Citation | Can Own Name | Can Own Child | Can Own Event |
| 0 | Person | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | |||
| 1 | Family | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||||
| 2 | Event | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | |||||
| 3 | Source | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||||||
| 4 | Citation | Y | Y | ||||||||
| 5 | Place | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||||||
| 6 | Task | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||||||
| 7 | Name | Y | Y | Y | |||||||
| 8 | not used (was General task in RM7 with 0 ownerid) | ||||||||||
| 14 | Place Detail | Y | Y | Y | |||||||
| 15 | not used (was Research Item in RM7) | ||||||||||
| 18 | Task Folder (update of Research Log) | Y |
As a further note:
When it says “Tags” in RM8 application it refers to Owner Links which can be edited at this point in the program
When it says “Used” in RM8 application it refers to Owner Links but they are not editable at this point in the program
When it says “Web Tags” in RM8 application it refers to URL
[…] Fields named OwnerType – see Understanding the RootsMagic 8 database – Ownership […]
Excellent summary. One small comment: you have left out a row for Media (type 11).
@salkind – I haven’t yet found anything owned by media to prove that value – any suggestions?
Pat, the AncestryTable has links of type 11 — these refer to the hidden media associated with various Ancestry events when syncing with TreeShare (e.g. census records, etc.).