* Plug-In/Query to sort Citations based on Entry Date

[David Potter]

Hi Forum

Is there/could there be a Plug-In available to sort Citations based on the Citation Entry Date. I appreciate some users would frown on this, but I would very much welcome that sort of ordering. So a simple reordering in ascending date order. If the date is complex like between X and Y or Q2 1983. Then drop these exceptions into a result set where the user can decide where to place these manually. Blanks date appear first or last maybe via a Plug-In option.

BR

David

[tatewise]

Hi David.
What is the purpose of that objective?

Do you appreciate the consequences?
There are many scenarios in which users often request ways of monitoring gaps in their research.
This usually requires checking the existence of key Source Citations such as a Birth Certificate.
It gets extremely complex if such 'best' Source Citations are not the first entry against each fact.

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

I don't fully follow the 'consequences' argument as there are better ways of determining missing vital records instead of looking at the list and ordering of Source Citations. I prefer to see them aligned with the FACT records and therefore Chronologically based as much as possible. That's just me I guess.

Secondly - you helped me by tweaking the Missing BMD Plug-In recently by suppressing 'Missing Birth Hits' if a Baptism record existed for pre Birth registration events. This requires that the Baptism is the very first Citation. This might not be the case if Census records were found first and I forget to make that manual adjustment to the list.

Thirdly - it's a choice, apart from the effort required to build, user's don't have to use it. If I had the skills I would build it myself, but I don't have these just now.

BR

David

[tatewise]

As you say, it takes effort to build a Plugin, so before I invest that effort, I like to discuss the ramifications, so you can convince me it is really going to be worthwhile.

It is important you do understand the consequences, because it is a regularly recurring theme, that is jeopardised if the 'best' Source Citation is not first.

You give a perfect example regarding the Lookup Missing BMD Records Plugin, where the order of the Source Citations is critical, often nothing to do with their Entry Date, and not just for your Birth and Baptism example.

The same scenario applies when creating Diagram Box Conditional Expressions to display Icons for vital records, or Query Row filter Expressions for listing Facts with missing vital records. Those Expressions get very complex if the 'best' vital record Source Citation is not 1st in the list.

I am interested in what "better ways of determining missing vital records" you have in mind.

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

I think I understand what you mean by consequences. Perhaps I should have mentioned that I use AS for almost 99% of all my data entry. Therefore I get the date of the Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death and Burial directly passed into the Citation Entry Date field. Similarly with Census dates. So I'm lucky in believing that my Vital records 'could be' displayed in the correct (not 'best' may be when considering other users) chronological sequence and aligning logically and nicely with the related Fact records.

So yes I agree this might not suit all users who use a different strategy for the Entry Date field if they don't use AS. But interestingly there is no function in FH to sort on that Date Field, so that leaves the user to manually arrange and keep up to date the ordering of the Citations in their database. So a lack of functionality on the one hand and a burden on the user for the other. A Plug-In would offer that choice to order based on that field and users can choose or not to use it.
Please don't ask me to raise this as a Wish List item. We both know how long some of those items sit around out there waiting for Calico Pie to address them. Unfair maybe but a true observation.

BR

David

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

I can see I didn't answer your last question about better ways of figuring what's missing. I was referring to your Plug-Ins for missing BMD and Census and of course simple lists from FH where you can obviously see something is missing as in a Birth date, etc.. That is all.

David

[tatewise]

Those 'better ways' rely on the same criteria of the vital record Citations being 1st in the list.

As I see it, the Plugin would get used once and subsequently ignored, because as each Citation is added you would review their order.

I have quickly written the attached Query to list every Fact where any of its Citations are not in Entry Date order.
Let me know if it works for you, and any exceptional cases it does not find.
For each case, simply double-click on any Date to display the Fact and then review the Citations.

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

Many thanks - I see the different approach here and yes that would certainly help to identify out of sequence Citations based on dates. Then I go fix if I wish to - nice.

Super - I'll run it through this afternoon.

BR

David

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

That worked a treat thank you very much. I'm left with 3 Individuals who had very late Birth registrations which passed beyond the Baptism Date. And 1 where the Death Registration date passed the Burial date.

Sorted - Thank you very much.

BR

David

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

Hopefully you remember this query you wrote for me to list out of sequence Date Citations for Facts some time back.

I have now adopted your approach to have all Source/Citations attached to the Individual (Indi.Name Data Reference) where it supports that person. Actually I'm just half through the final clean up of Marriages, which is taking longer than first thought.

Before I start the very long winded but worth while step of identifying the strongest to least strong citation and ordering these in order of strength I would first like to order the Citations for Names in Date Sequence. You might ask why but it seems the best place/way to start this process of further clean up and validation.

I have tried to modify the query you created to work with INDI.NAMES but am out of my depth and not getting very far.

Would you kindly give me a start by identifying the first elements of the query code that would do the same logic for listing out of sequence date citations but for Names.

[tatewise]

The snag is that NAME is not a Fact so you cannot use a Fact Query.

You will have to create an Individual Query using a similar strategy but where FACT is replaced by INDI.NAME.
The Owner column =GetRecord(%FACT%) can become just %INDI%.
Clearly the columns for =FactLabel(%FACT%) and %FACT.DATE:COMPACT% have no equivalent.

That all should work fine for the Primary Name field.
But do you have any Alternate Name fields with Source Citations?
If so, you will need to repeat the exercise for INDI.NAME[2] and INDI.NAME[3], et seq, each in a new Individual Query.

[David Potter]

Thank you Mike. I wasn't so far off. I thought i needed the equivalent of fact.sour but for indi.name in columns somewhere. No alternate names so no issue there.
I'll try this out. Thanks very much.

[David Potter]

Thanks Mike.

Worked that one out now.

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

I have one Individual who keeps appearing on this query based on INDI.NAME and Citation Entry Date Sequence. I can't see anything wrong with the sequence of Citation Dates for this person, especially when having gone through a few hundred Individuals to create an ordered start point for further cleanup.

Would you kindly check the query screen shots attached and let me know if there are any errors. It's only the one record but it's pushing up my paranoia index as to why this person keeps appearing when I have resolved all others.

Many Thanks

David

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

I should have mentioned this person has 30 Citation Entries against INDI.NAME. The query I built did originally stretch to cover that number of columns and row elements but I stripped it back to see if that was the cause - but it was not.

BR

[tatewise]

Can't see anything wrong with the Query, so it would help to see the Dates in the Result Set.

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

Here are the first 9 Citation Dates, as I say there are 30 Citations so it is only showing the first 9. But I thought the query would only show a result if one date was greater than the next date?

BR

[tatewise]

Yes, it will show all 10 Columns for any Name where any Citation Dates violate any of the Rows tab rules.

In this case 19 August 1952 > 7 April 1861 so that 4th entry should be 9th or later, or it should be 1852?

[David Potter]

Hi Mike

Crikey how embarrassing. The Scots do say 'there's none so blind as those that cannot see'. I must have seen that as 1852 when it is correct at 1952.

A trip to the optician's I think. I'm really sorry, I can't tell you how many times I have looked at these dates and missed that.

Thank you so much. I do really appreciate your help for such a stupid issue.

David