Chalem Systems Group: Products: Family Tree

Family Tree Server
Web-Based Genealogical Server

elcome to Family Tree Server, a work in progress by Chalem Systems Group. Family Tree Server will be a database-driven, web-server-based application for publishing genealogical information on the Internet.

Implemented on MS Internet Information Server using Active Server Pages, MS Jet Database, and ISAPI filtering, Family Tree Server is an important pet project for Chalem Systems Group. It brings together CSG Principal Consultant Steve Chalem's personal interest in his own family tree with the firm's work as a database application development group.

Background

Steve had always been interested in his roots. Tracing the twists and turns of his family tree has intrigued him for years, but seriously collecting and analyzing family data is something that had eluded him until recently.

The seeds of Family Tree Server go back to his mother. "A couple of years ago, my mother received Broderbund's Family Tree Maker as a gift and began entering the information she already had into this program," he says. Fairly quickly, mother and son were deep into their genealogy. "Mostly through her efforts, our family tree has now grown to contain over 6,000 people!" he adds.

Steve and his mom decided that the Internet was a perfect platform for their family tree work. "We hoped that others doing genealogical research would find themselves or their relatives on our tree and be able to give us new information," says Chalem. This humble little effort has already paid off. According to Steve, they currently receive about one inquiry per week. Since first publishing their site, they have made contact with many relatives they didn't even know about.

With Family Tree Server still in the development stage, the Chalems currently publish the information using GED2HTML, a shareware program (written by Eugene W. Stark) that converts from the GEDCOM format, widely used by genealogical software, into inter-linked HTML pages for publication on the Internet. This approach was a good starting point, but is already getting unwieldy. "We've collected more information than is practical for this approach," says Chalem. "The whole time I've been working with it, I've been imagining how to do it right." Based on Steve's work deploying databases on the web, building an application that would provide a streamlined approach to management and an elegant approach to displaying genealogical information was a logical next step. If you are interested in CSG's approach to the Family Tree on the Internet, email Steve Chalem.

Features and Benefits

Visual Approach—Information is shown in a familiar family tree format.

Photo-Ready—Individual entries can include photos.

Hyperlinkable Entries—Individual entries can include email addresses and links to other web sites.

Easy to Navigate—Users can explore the family tree simply by clicking on individuals' names.

Database-Driven—Names, relationships, and all other information are stored in a relational database and retrieved as needed.

Browser-Independent—All processing is done on the server and results are delivered to the browser via standard HTML and image files.

Search-Engine Friendly—Although pages are generated on-the-fly in response to web requests, each page appears "from the outside" to be a separate HTML page, with an individual's name in the page title. This way, every name appearing in the tree will be indexed on the major search engines, so that potentially related people doing research on the Internet will find the site.

GEDCOM Compatible—Can import information from the GEDCOM format, designed by the Mormon Church and widely used by genealogical software.

Same-Sex Relationships—Unlike the GEDCOM format and unlike most genealogical software, Family-Tree server handles same-sex relationships.