GDAT: Genealogical Data Analysis Tool

DNA analysis for genealogy research is not easy. Most people are content having likely relatives identified for them, recognizing a few, recognizing some related family names. Some of the DNA services can suggest helpful records from their vast catalog. If you've created a family tree, some services can connect you to other family trees that might identify your common ancestor. Some identify triangulations, or let you compare graphical representations of DNA segments. All of this is helpful.

But these services have two major shortcomings. First, they are competing for massive numbers of paying customers and focus their development on making analysis both easy and proprietary. They do massive amounts of data analysis and present you with the result, or a simple tool. But they do not offer tools that allow you to do lots of your own analysis. Perhaps there just isn't a large enough market for sophisticated analysis. The second shortcoming is that they can only compare data of their own customers.

GMP and GDAT

For the past year and a half, I've been using a third party tool, Genome Mate Pro (GMP), to do some of this analysis. With some supporting third party tools, like Pedigree Thief, 529andYou, DNAGedcom, and perhaps others, which gather ICW, triangulation, and family tree data that is not available for export from any of the genealogy DNA services, GMP assembles DNA match data from all of these services - AncestryDNA, MyHeritage DNA, FTDNA, 23andMe, and GEDMatch (doesn't test, but does have DNA matching data) - into a single database. GMP has just been replaced by GDAT (Genealogical Data Analysis Tool) to facilitate continued future development. Unfortunately, not all of the information you would like to gather is available: Ancestry has threatened third party software developers with legal action if they gather match and tree information from their site, Ancestry does not show detailed chromosome data for matches, and Ancestry does not make available for export/sharing/harvesting match or chromosome data, like the other services do.

GDAT Analysis

Once your imported all available data into GDAT, you can:

(1) Easily view your DNA matches from all the different testing services that you've imported. In this list you can see the status (MRCA identified? sent e-mail? plus many more), the ancestor branch of the family they belong to (if you've identified one), any helpful note you've added, how much DNA you share, whether or not you've added their tree, and more.

(2) Easily change to detailed views of more information gathered about your match: which DNA segments they share, lists of ICW or triangulations that you share, their family tree, family surnames and locations, contact information, and more.

(3) Easily view graphical representation of shared DNA segments, along with others in your database that have nearby or identical segments. You can declutter these views by setting minimum cM required for display.

(4) From any of these lists you can run a comparison on any available family trees to identify common family names.

(5) You can assign DNA segments shared with a match to your common ancestor (MRCA).

(6) You can add extensive notes with more information, records gathered to created a (match's) family tree, status of your research, stumbling blocks, etc.

(7) You can merge matches. Why? If you have two matches who are a parent and a child, usually the DNA you share with the child is contained within the DNA you share with the parent. Usually, the parent shares more DNA, or is a "better" match, and is closer to you in the family tree you eventually hope build that includes both of you. The child's DNA does not provide any information that you don't get from the parent, so you may wish to declutter your lists by eliminating the child's information. If you delete the information, though, it will be added as a new match the next time you import an update on your DNA matches. Merging the two will prevent the less important match from reappearing. You may also find that one of your matches has been tested at two or more different services, so appears three times among your matches. You can declutter your lists by merging this relative's three records together.

There are other tools and features, and I expect that more will be added with future releases of GDAT. (With GMP, an update was released about once per month.)

GDAT organizing

Perhaps more important than the analysis tools, though, is the ability to keep track of your research. You can make extensive notes, on multiple pages, if you like. You can copy and paste records, correspondence, to do lists, etc. Notes, status flags, and ancestor branches, across several DNA testing sources, have helped advance my research more than the promising analytical tools, so far.

I don't want to give the impression that this tool leads to easily extending your ancestry. It is a lot of work. In three years, though I've identified hundreds of DNA matches, I only count a half dozen major discoveries. And I don't think any of them was due to a GMP analysis tool. But all were helped by being able to keep my research organized with GMP.

Conclusion

So if you're interested in putting in the work needed to extend your family tree through DNA research, I highly recommend adding GDAT to your toolbox. (Note1: I also highly recommend making a donation to the developer. Note2: Be warned: there is steep learning curve for GDAT. Not like learning a new programming language, but much more than, say, learning to use e-mail.)

GDAT web site