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 GMP has just been replaced by GDAT (Genealogical Data Analysis Tool) to facilitate continued future development.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

New Family Tree

I've finally gotten a family tree back online! This time it's located on my own genealogy web site at https://cushings.com/roots/public_tng/ .  (Also in the list of links to the right.) A few things are different. I've used a php package called The Next Generation (TNG). It took a few days to get it installed, and another few days to test it's features, privacy, security, and whatnot to make sure it met my needs. The advantages over my previous Rootsweb installation are that it is online (Rootsweb trees went offline for about a year), it allows researchers to contact me (the new Rootsweb had no attribution or contact for the tree owners), and the search and display and look and feel of the web site is so much better than what Rootsweb offers (or at least what it was offering when I finally removed my tree about a year ago). The advantage over an Ancestry tree is that I can make this available to the public. (You have to be an Ancestry subscriber to see Ancestry trees.) Other services offer tree space, but with a tree as large as mine I either needed to pay for space or allow others to collaborate on my tree, or other features that I don't need. I've also changed what information I'm making available. I'm just including a skeleton tree of direct line ancestors to help me better focus on extending my own tree. By including just direct ancestors, I'm hoping to connect with people whose own trees meet mine at its oldest branches. At least that's the hope. We'll see.

If you search my tree and you don't see a family you're looking for, but you know I'm related because I've mentioned someone in a blog post, or on my genealogy web site, please contact me. I'm happy to look for and share more information.

Downloading Ancestry matches

Just a quick note. I have been using Genome Mate Pro to track my research and progress in DNA genealogy. It allows me to take notes on my quick and dirty research, it displays chromosome segments of my DNA matches for comparison, it allows me to screen out the smallest and largest segments for clarity, and it allows me to easily see who among my matches I've connected to my tree and what the status is of my research into others. GMP imports match data from a csv file. Many DNA matching services allow you to download a csv file of match data. You can import them all into GMP so that you can review information from many different services in one place, on your home computer.

Already this note is unlikely to be quick ...

AncestryDNA does not allow you to download match data. As the most popular of the services, they no doubt want you to do all of your work through their service. Third parties have developed software that will log in to Ancestry (with your help) and automatically browse through the match list and gather the essential data, as if you were doing it yourself, then export the data to a csv file that you can use, for example, with GMP.

Now the quick part ...

One of the more popular tools for this has been a Chrome extension called Ancestry DNA Helper. I have been unable to get it to work for me. I haven't seen an announcement, but did see some messages related to RIP as of July 1, so I'm guessing that this software is no longer an option.

I searched for another free program, saw some recommendations for DNA Match Manager, installed it and tried it out, and it did nothing but report a problem. As instructed, I simplified the download task, with no better result, then followed their link to submit a log file to get help troubleshooting the problem, but the link just opens an empty box. So that was a bust.

So I'm still searching. It would be convenient to be able to see my Ancestry progress along side my work from MyHeritage and 23andMe, all in one place.

Genealogy software

I haven't been in the market for new software in many years, and there are lots of sites that review genealogy software, so I won't make any comparisons.  Well, not many.  But I can tell you that I use Legacy Family Tree and am very pleased with it.  Information is easy to enter and view.  Keeping track of information sources is easy.  I tend to stay away from proprietary features, like adding pictures and video clips because I assume that it will be difficult to change software, if I choose to do that one day.  But I would recommend this software to anyone.  (And if you're in my family, it certainly makes it easier to share information by using the same file format.)  There is a supplemental charting program to make up for the very limited built-in charting capability.  There may be other features you want that I don't use, like DNA tracking or collaboration over the Internet, or searching genealogy sites for matches with your family tree.  Legacy does all of these things, but I don't know how they compare to others and I personally don't use them.  I think that all of the software companies offer free versions of their software, at least on a trial basis, and I would recommend trying some out.

I also use GenSmarts to analyze my family tree and make research recommendations to me.  Legacy's built in research helper seems less specific and too complicated.  I also use an app called Families to display my family tree data on an iPad.  You can make changes on the iPad and sync with your desktop file, but I haven't tried that yet.