Family Tree Maker 2008 beta drops CD-Rom database reader!
If you own or use genealogy database CDs and family Tree Maker software I want to alert you to some potential concerns about the next version of FTM software leaving out CD-ROM support.
I was initially excited about the new Family Tree Maker beta. I rely heavily on FTM for research on Ancestry.com and to maintain my research. On initial look the new sfotware update is a much more than them minor revisions of the last few versions. It’s a total re-write of the software with a more web based (and Ancestry.com oriented) approach that could really make this an even more useful tool.
But now I’m pretty angry to find that support for reading data CD-ROMs is being dropped from the new FTM.
If you own Family Archive Cds and use family Tree Maker it’s important that you check out the FTM 2008 beta quickly and send feedback to the beta feedback email address. And do it quickly, or you’ll find yourself left out and unable to use your Cds in the future versions of FTM.
There is a discussion group unrelated to the authors of the program where people are discussing teh beta that also may interest you. The list is run by users and intended to cover more geenral technical issues with the software than just the curernt beta release. But this also seems to be the only place where there is a public discussion of the changes we see in the software. See the FTM-Tech mailing list for more info and discussions of the software, but be aware that the best place to send feedback about the beta is to the beta email address.
There is a free piece of software, the Family Archive Viewer, which allows you to read the CDs, but it doens’t allow you to update info from them into a GEDCOM database. For years the software vendors selling the CDs have encouraged use of Family Tree Maker because it expands the usefulness of the CDs.
So now, after buying FTM because of these recommendations, and being a customer for years who has purchased upgrade 3 times in the last 4 years or so, and after investing hundreds of dollars in reference CD-ROMs — I discovered the next upgrade will obsolete any ability to work directly with thee CDs to insert data into my research.
Stranger still, the parent company that develops the software still sells the database CDs at their Ancestry web store.
It’s not clear if the motivation is just that they are too lazy to provide backwards compatibility in this re-write of why they decided it was ok to leave this out.
The ability to save files readable by previous versions of the software is another complaint on the beta discussion board, FTM-tech, on rootsweb.com. and users such as myself are unable to import some old databases, and there seems to be much debate of handlnig of sources text fields.
It seems likely that this discontinued CD support is motivated by the desire to get customers to subscribe to Ancestry.com instead of buying CDs.
The online databases are great, and Ancestry has become a fairly essential research tool. But I’ve been advised that I will just need to keep an old version of the software if I want to use CDs with my database (and then I can’t write data back and forth between the two easily, apparently). And that just bothers the heck out of me.
November 4th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Critical Data Losses Associated with Family Tree Maker 2008
Be afraid – be very afraid — of losing valuable data when transferring/upgrading to Family Tree Maker 2008 (FTM2008) software. I highly recommend NOT upgrading to this product at this time, and instead staying with earlier versions of FTM or using other vendors’ software.
I am an experienced genealogist with an extensive IT software development and testing background. When I recently attempted to upgrade to the recently released FTM2008 from Family Tree Maker 16 (FTM16), I experienced an large number of problems, the most dangerous and severe being LOSS OF DATA ! !
Below are my file statistics before and after upgrading to FTM2008:
File Size: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 18.598 Mb (AFTER) 13,855 Mb
Total individuals in data base: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 12,300 (AFTER) 12,300
Total marriages: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 3,769 (AFTER) 3,769
Total Text Records: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 194,103 (AFTER) 152,213
More than 20 percent of my text records were lost and failed to transfer. The lost records appear to be source data documenting events (i.e., birth, death, etc.) and individual notes for individuals. Also, some sources that did transfer appear to have been scrambled and no longer relate to the correct events.
I initiated numerous communications with the technical staff who purportedly supports FTM2008, and, in turn, received comments such as “I do apologize that you are frustrated with the software” …and… “I am not sure why this information has not transferred to the new software”. Other than these comments, there appeared to be no concern for the problem, nor any expressed intent to fix it.
Because of the seriousness of data loss, I subsequently sent a message to David Humphreys (Project Manager responsible for FTM2008) and two letters to Tim Sullivan, President and CEO of The Generations Network (TGN) – the company that owns Ancestry.com and produces Family Tree Maker software. THERE WAS NEVER A RESPONSE FROM ANY OF TGN’s MANAGEMENT.
It was recently announced that in mid-October 2007, Spectrum Equity Investors acquired TGN (which included FTM2008, Ancestry.com, and MyFamily.com) for $300 million. So, I sent correspondence to the two Co-Founders and Managing Directors of Spectrum Equity Investors advising them of this critical problem with FTM2008 – and like the correspondence sent to the senior management of TGN – NOTHING HAPPENED ! !
I highly encourage all using, or who might be considering using, FTM2008 to proceed with utmost caution. Besides the FTM2008 software being less than adequate in it’s present form (generally “buggy”, reduced reports, more cumbersome, difficult to install, etc.), as genealogists, we can not afford to lose the results of our research. I would suggest everyone retain their previous versions of their data files and software and refrain from using FTM2008 until the company announces a new release and CAN PROVE that their buggy software is fixed and reliable.
FTM2008 definitely has a long way to go before regaining and earning back the reputation that it enjoyed with the earlier versions !
Users may confirm the many problems being encountered with FTM2008 by doing a Google search using “Family Tree Maker 2008” and “problems”. Literally 100’s of sites are listed ! !
Dan Hunter
December 4th, 2007 at 2:13 am
This is a follow-up to my Nov. 3, 2007 posting concerning the potential for data loss while transferring information to Family Tree Maker 2008 (FTM2008).
Although efforts to make contact with the management team of FTM2008 were unsuccessful prior to my posting, two days after the posting, David Humphreys initiated contact which resulted in ongoing communication.
For those who are only “scanning” this posting, I will sum up the info below by stating that I now tend to believe there is NO LOSS OF DATA when info is transferred into FTM2008 from external sources.
After establishing contact with the FTM development team, I shared a copy of my database with the team and they repeated the same processes I described that I believed contributed to data loss. They report they could not identify any data loss in the transfer to FTM2008, and explained that the apparent loss of data is due to the fact that FTM16 (the old version) stores data differently in its internal database dependent on whether the data was “entered directly” into FTM16 - or - was “imported” into FTM16 (e.g. from an imported GEDCOM or other file).
I’ve been advised that the new FTM2008 uses a totally differently schema (data base storage structure/content/semantics) from the older software — BUT — does not result in any loss of data.
I have begun checking their explanation with a smaller sub-set of my data, and have so far found their explanation to be true.
The main difference I’ve found (and which led me to believe there was data loss) between FTM2008 and FTM16, is a difference in how some source information appears to the end-user in FTM2008. ALL source information in FTM2008 is a more hidden, and harder to view than it was in FTM16, but in certain situations the source information within FTM2008 for events (i.e., Name, Birth Date, Death Date, Marriage Date, etc.) is more “secreted” than FTM2008’s “norm”.
It appears that when source comments stored in FTM2008 DO NOT reference (or are not linked to) specific records within the Master Source file, these comments appear differently than source comments that ARE directly linked to an entry in the Master Source file - - BUT - - they are stored in the database and appear to the user (and in reports) somewhat differently in FTM2008 than these same comments did in FTM16 (they appeared with the comments but showed “No Master Source”)
Coupled with the fact that FTM16 stores data in different ways (discussed above – ‘direct-entry’ versus ‘import’) the other factor that led me to the conclusion that data had been lost results from how FTM2008 produces a GEDCOM file, as opposed to how FTM16 produces a GEDCOM file. It appears both versions DO produce standardized GEDCOM-compliant files; however, each version uses different rules to produced those compliant GEDCOM files (i.e., FTM2008 appears to take long comments and/or notes, and generates multiple short “CONC” lines within a GEDCOM file (instructions that cause those lines to be later concatenated/linked) - whereas FTM16 takes those same long comments and/or notes, and generates longer lines within a GEDCOM file.
To recap - - - I now tend to believe that the importation of data to FTM2008 will not result in a data loss within the new version’s database. Some of the info may be a bit hard to find, but everything appears to be there.
As far as needed improvements to FTM2008, the management team responsible for FTM2008 development advised me that the ‘just-released’ Service Pack 2 strives to improve the reliability of the application and should improve some performance issues. The new SP2 also added the Ahnentafel & Register reports to the application. They assured me they were “looking hard” at ways to improve the way FTM2008 deals with ‘Sources’ along with other on-going performance-enhancing improvements.
For me personally, I will continue to use FTM16, but will regularly re-evaluate FTM2008 for performance and functionality issues, and will probably upgrade in the future when I can be as comfortable with the new version as I am with the old.
Dan Hunter