Hi everyone,
I want to thank everyone who has told me how much they appreciate what
I do for the site. We have all had to learn so much to accomplish what
we have, but we have not or will not let the unknown stop us.
Right now the problem we have with searching is the NULL fields. As
more records get transcribed, the better our search results will be.
Right now if you use race, gender, mother and father surnames you may
not getting a correct result. If any of those fields are null, which
most are, then they are not included in the results. Its no glitch or
error in my programming either.
Examples:
if male is selected as gender in the search form
the query includes Gender='male'
MySQL will only include records with male in the gender field
if "Ada Hall" is entered into the Mother's Surname in the form
the query includes MotherGiven='Ada" and MotherSurname1='Hall' or
MotherSurname2='Hall'
MySQL will only include a record if it has Ada in MotherGiven and Hall
in either of the surname fields.
So if the record isn't transcribed yet, you don't get the right
result. I personally didn't want to add any of the fields that may
contain NULL to the search. I felt that people would think I'm a bad
programmer, when they know the record is there. Sheryl and I came to
an agreement that we'd use the PrincipalSurname1 as a required field
for now, just because we know it won't be NULL. I agreed to adding
the other fields in the search, as long as she noted this in the
search help page. We can't use if Gender='male' or Gender is NULL, to
include all possible records, excluding females only. That would
defeat the purpose of being able to select gender as a field in the
search.
Sharon, I see the need for a search page that allows searching
mother's surname. More search pages will be made. We can use any
field that is in a record, in a search query. We are working around
the NULLs right now, but as more records get transcribed, the less of
a problem this will be.
With all of us determined to make this a site that will focus on the
needs of researching genealogy, we can overcome the obstacles that
have hindered our research in past experiences.
Tanya
PS,
Marilyn, I believe when Sheryl mentions senior volunteers, she means
volunteers that have been with the project for a long time. :>