The approach toward EXIDs is probably the innovation that especially piques my curiosity from the FamilySearch integration in the Gramps 6.1 beta release. I am watching most keenly for even hints in postings about the logic and assumptions behind cross-referencing IDs between systems.
Extending the way Gramps stores FamilySearch profile IDs into other systems will dramatically affect my database.
I have grown habituated to data-scraping Place data with the Place Cleanup gramplet by @prculley. And addicted to the power searching of the WebSearch gramplet by @Urchello.
But the Place Cleanup overwriting a GeoNames ID into the Place ID is both fragile and precludes the idea of other cross-referencing other Gazetteer databases. WebSearch assumes UUIDs will be stored as Key/Value pairs in Attributes for the particular object type.. but I consider Attributes to be ‘workaround’ containers for data that has no place in the Gramps database structure. Which is ‘okay’ but means that tools to leverage that data is only going to come from the original developer… other contributors are unlikely to build on on a ‘structure’ that can change or disappear without notice. (Plus, I find myself exhausted by the endless menu scrolling when there are extensive Attributes custom types and Tags.)
I am hoping that EXIDs will become a Citation functionality… something akin to another Volume/Page field. First, because being able to assign a Confidence. (So I can mass update all the FindAGrave or FamilySearch citations to a “Low” Confidence.) But also because there are workflows for checking if Citations from a Source are missing (or multiple citations from a Source exist) and assigning visual indicators for those cases.
But I haven’t be able to work out how one might mark the level of information in an external database. In the external ID is specifically for the Person, Place, Source is the expected case. But I’d also want to cite an EXID where the ‘fact’ is only mentioned in passing… yet might be my first (or only) hint of that ‘fact’. Because documenting a research ‘trigger’ is really helpful. Even more helpful for tracking “facts” that you’ve disproven… so you don’t duplicate that research.
Thus, it will be interesting to see how Gramps 6.1 will be logging of FamilySearch EXIDs for profile, potential merge profiles, permanently duplicated profiles, superseded/merged profiles, and “not a match” profiles.