GeneWeb

GeneWeb, free software with a GNU license, is available for Unix, Windows and Mac (OS X).

Daniel de Rauglaudre
Research Engineer
INRIA - Domaine de Voluceau - Rocquencourt
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex - France

GeneWeb's strong points are the following:

• Web interface
• Dynamic display
• Relationship and consanguinity computing
• Polyglot
• Spelling correction
• Nobility titles
• Information update and protection
• Customization (background color, etc)
• Miscellaneous Features: birthdays, last births, etc.
• An example: more than 3 millions persons
• Import and export of GEDCOM files

If you want to install GeneWeb on your computer, or if you want to know "how it works", see the directions for use.

Web interface

If you have experience surfing on the Web, you do not need to learn anything new in using GeneWeb: click on the texts, the buttons, fill in the zones, go forward, backward, record the bookmarks, change the sizes of the pages, use one or several pages, etc.

Just because you use a Web browser in displaying GeneWeb, does not mean that you need to be connected to the Internet or a network. You can use GeneWeb in either of two ways:

• On A Stand-Alone Computer : You can run the program without being connected to the Internet or a network. You just need a browser (but, generally speaking, most computers today come with one, so you need no special installation).
• Internet Connection: Whether by means of a modem, or a direct hookup by a cable or DSL connection, you can set up a link to your GeneWeb database on your homepage, if you so desire to share it with others.

Dynamic display

This avoids problems of filling up disk space. The data is displayed in GeneWeb-created pages, which are not kept on your computer when you leave the program (unless you manually do a "save").

The following is an example of a personal page of Juan Carlos, king of Spain, borrowed from my own database. The original data was entered in French, & remains in that language (king of Spain is written "roi d'Espagne" in French), but the program displays in English (ie. the titles, etc.). When you use GeneWeb, the blue areas are clickable, & go to other personal records or other kinds of pages.

• Juan Carlos

The age of a person that you see in a record is normally automatically calculated from the current date. (This is not the case above, since the example of Juan Carlos is a fixed display, so it doesn't do this calculation.)

Relationship and consanguinity computing

The relationship between any two persons is calculated based on a common ancestor. It is possible that there may be several common ancestors, and for a given ancestor several connecting branches of different lengths. GeneWeb informs you who these ancestors are, and how many branches there are between the people. It lets you know what this relationship is : whether a brother, a sister, a great-aunt, or an ancestor who might be 15 generations distant, etc.

It is then possible to display the details of any of the relationship branches. Here, for example, is a relationship link between Juan Carlos and prince Charles:

• Relationship link.

The consanguinity (mathematical relationship) between any two persons is calculated from their relationship links. For example, between brothers and sisters, this number is 25%, which represents a close relationship. Between first cousins, this number is 6.25%. The different combinations of relationship links between any two people leads to complex computations, which would be practically impossible to make by hand! GeneWeb performs these calculations for you!!

It is thus possible to appreciate the difficulties in trying to determine the consanguinity (or relationships) between famous persons. As an example of this difficulty: Charles II was the last king of Spain, who belonged to the house of Habsburg. His parents were not brothers and sisters, "just" uncle and niece, but the accumulation of marriages inside the same family leads to a mathematical consanguinity greater than the one that a brother and sister would have! Notice the line Consanguinity in the following page:

• Charles II

There are few other software programs that are able to make these kinds of computations. GeneWeb manipulates huge numbers, and arrives at specific and very efficient results!

Through GeneWeb we are able to determine that Juan Carlos is descended from Charlemagne, & that there are literally billions of branches linking these two people. In fact, these branches pass through over 7,000 people in connecting Juan Carlos & Charlemagne! This amazing computation is done by GeneWeb in just a few seconds! Notice that their actual consanguinity (mathematical relationship) turns out to be very small (0.03%), despite these billions of branches. These "billions of links" may seem like a big number, but because the two individuals are, in fact, separated by up to 52 generations, the mathematical relationship comes out to be extremely small. (For the longest branch, which is 52 generations, there are actually a total of 4.5 million billion branches (4,500,000,000,000,000)!)

Polyglot

Here, for example, is the same record of Juan Carlos displayed in the French version of the program :

• Juan Carlos

If you want, you yourself can add other languages; for example, by translating the welcome page (which is fixed in its meaning in all languages), or the lexicon (which will take more time, because it is so large).

Moreover, if you find that the translation of some word is not exactly correct, it is possible to change it.

Spelling corrections

Sometimes, entering a variation of a person's name in a foreign language will work. For example, to find Juan Carlos, the following requests succeed:

• Juan Carlos de Borbón
• Jean Charles de Bourbon
• John Charles of Burbon

Notice that this does not always work. There are cases where the ambiguity is too big or where your spelling is too different from the person's actual name.

It is possible to search for a woman by her maiden or her married name.

If there are nobility titles, one can use the "place" part as a surname. So, Juan Carlos, king of Spain ("roi d'Espagne" in my French database) can be found by:

• Juan Carlos d'Espagne

Nobility titles

Information update and protection

If you set up your own GeneWeb database, you probably do not want just anyone to be able to change your data. To prevent this, you can set up a password for your database, that you may want to share only with the persons you trust. This password can be changed at any time by simply editing a file.

Persons knowing the password will be able to make changes, even if they are on the other side of the planet!

The following is the display entry page that you would use to update someone's record. For an actual database situation, you would fill or modify the areas you want, and then click on the "Ok" button at the bottom of the page. (The below page does not actually update anything, since it is only a display.)

• Person modification.

Another situation that may arise is that maybe you want the personal information of still-living persons to be hidden. Another password can be set up which would allow only authorized people to see information for persons who were born or died less than one century ago.

You can share this second password with persons that would you like to give the ability to view this personal information, without giving them the right to make updates.

Customization

You can also create a secondary page(s), which would hold specific information about an individual, & which would have a direct link to their personal record or their relationship with other persons in the database.

Miscellaneous Features: birthdays, last birth, etc.

These results are displayed only if the password protecting personal information has been provided (that is, if you set up passwords).

It is also possible to add pictures to an individual's personal record.

An example: more than 3 millions persons

Note: this is a link to the English version of GeneWeb, but the detail data that was entered is in French, & still displays as such.

• http://roglo.eu/roglo?

There is no limit to the size of a genealogy database. Bigger databases will simply consume more memory.

Only one GeneWeb program running on a PC, is all that is necessary to handle multiple databases. In other words, it is not necessary to run multiple versions of the program if you have more than one database. Plus, whenever a change is made to a database, it is not necessary to stop and restart the program. The change takes place immediately, & is available for display right away.

Import and export of GEDCOM files

Conversely, it is possible to create a GEDCOM file from a GeneWeb database.

Technical appendix

GeneWeb is what is called a "daemon" (in the Unix world). It is a program that spends its time waiting for somebody to send it requests. The program is also able to record a log of the requests made to it.

GeneWeb does not use applets, Java, nor Java script, just simple HTML. All the computing is done by the home (server) computer.

GeneWeb is written in OCaml, a programming language developed at Cristal project (Web page) of INRIA: Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (Web page).

GeneWeb is currently available for the UNIX operating system, for Windows, and for Mac (OS X).

The Unix and Mac versions have some capabilities that the Windows version does not have:

• The time of a request can be limited, in order to avoid requests that take too long to answer or that generate too much text.
• Multiple requests can be handled at the same time. It is possible (and strongly suggested) to provide a maximum number to the program, in order to avoid long delays if too many requests happen to arrive at the same time.
• There is a system built in to the program to avoid conflict problems when two persons try to modify the same database at the same time.

Remote accesses are able to be disconnected, if necessary, when the number of potentially generated pages is too large.

The program has now about 44,000 lines of OCaml and HTML code, including the different provided tools (but not including the documentation).

The algorithms of consanguinity and relationships are credited to Didier Rémy (Web page).

To modify the data, you need only use a Web server or some kind of text editor. Two tools are provided: one - to build a database from the source files; the other - to perform the opposite operation, i.e. rebuild the source files from the database, including updates that were made online.

• A practical suggestion is to backup your database regularly. This allows you to compare any changes made remotely to your prior database, & verify that the changes were made correctly, & by only authorized people.
• If you have access to a text editor, you can use that to enter/change data instead. And then when you have completed your changes, simply merge the changed document into your database. This may be faster than doing everything online, ie. using the input display screens.
• Finally, using the tool programs, one is able to separate data from the database, ie. cut your database into two or more parts to create smaller databases. And conversely, one could also merge multiple databases into one large database.
• These tools are also useful when one is installing a new version of GeneWeb. The internal representation of the databases may change from one version to another.