[ Thanks to LinuxLinks for this link.
]
“Tracing your ancestry is painstaking work, can be
extremely addictive and creates large amounts of data. Storing that
information suggests using some form of database. However, standard
relational databases lack the functionality that hobbyist
genealogists typically need. This has led to the development of
software which offers tailored functionality, to store data and
relationships between parents, spouses and children, as well as
handling additional events in an individual’s life, photographs,
free-form notes, and other multimedia, and source citations.
Moreover genealogy software can produce a variety of graphical
charts and text reports, such as ahnentafel reports, pedigree
charts, and Register reports.“Most genealogy programs can import and export using the GEDCOM
standard. GEDCOM is an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication.
It is a specially organized text file for organizing genealogy
data.”