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File Compare / Merge problems

Posted: 29 Jan 2005 14:05
by paultt
How long should FH v 2.3.1 take to analyse or compare two gedcom files?  I have just aborted the process after waiting for over 3 hours!![cry]  Still haven't seen the '3 window' merge compare screen!! User for about a month, converting from PAF.

Background.  I have a reasonably large gedcom file ( 33760 individuals, 11633 families, 11,712kb in size on disk) which I sent to another researcher for his review and updates. I have continued to do minor updates, link photos, etc in the gedcom on my pc, but have not added any new individuals. The original gedcom has now come back with all his changes and additions.  I loaded it into FH, ran through all the verify's, etc and did a save from within FH. It is now 12,055 kb in size, with 34867 individuals and 11991 families.  Ideal test to use the file merge and compare facility within FH to discover the additions made by my other researcher !!

My PC is an AMD Duron 800mhz, with 256 mb memory, an 80gb hard disk of which about 30gb is still free space.
Help!

Paul

ID:761

File Compare / Merge problems

Posted: 29 Jan 2005 15:26
by Jane
I have to admit to have never tried to merge compare two such large files. My own research is much smaller than that.

I suspect your memory is rather small for the job. Was there lots of disk activity during the job?

File Compare / Merge problems

Posted: 29 Jan 2005 16:09
by paultt
There was actually very little disk activity.  I don't buy it that my PC doesn't have enough memory for the job!  I have just created two new PAF files from the exact same gedcom files, saved them both, and then used the PAF add-on, PAF Insight, to do a file compare, ready for me to check records for a merge.  The whole process from start to finish has taken 12 minutes!!
I think that there is something not quite right within FH?

Regards

Paul.

File Compare / Merge problems

Posted: 29 Jan 2005 16:47
by Jane
Obviously as a user site and not the programs authors I can only make suggestions. One possibility might be to send an e-mail to calico asking them to try the compare and merge on your files. I would recommend e-mailing first before attaching your files.

File Compare / Merge problems

Posted: 29 Jan 2005 18:51
by paultt
Thanks, Jane, Will do.

File Compare / Merge problems

Posted: 31 Jan 2005 13:24
by Jane
I have thought of something to try.

If you make a safe copy of your data and use a query with the split tree to delete all records not updated since your sent your file away (using the change date field). Then try merging the 'small' changes file.

Obviously I would still recommend contacting Calico Pie, but this might give you a work around. I suspect PAF does not do quite such complex processing when doing a merge, but having not seen source for for either can not be sure).