Proposal: full name

[Ka-Ping Yee]

Hi,

Let me kick off the technical discussion by tossing out a few ideas for the next version of PFIF.  My top wishes are for a full name, deletion requests, and fixed field order.  I'll do these in separate threads so we can keep our conversations organized.

This one is simple: how about adding a "full_name" field for cultures that don't use first and last names?

The proposal is to keep the existing fields, and let records use first_name, last_name, and full_name as appropriate for the person's culture.

—Ping
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[Peter Kaminski]

On 10/21/10 08:38 AM, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:

The proposal is to keep the existing fields, and let records use first_name, last_name, and full_name as appropriate for the person's culture.

Ping, PFIF 1.1 says, "In a person element, the fields person_record_id, first_name, and last_name are mandatory. All other fields are optional."

With first_name, last_name, and full_name, which would be mandatory and which would be optional?� Can that be expressed in XSD?

Pete

[Ka-Ping Yee]

Ping, PFIF 1.1 says, "In a person element, the fields person_record_id, first_name, and last_name are mandatory. All other fields are optional."

With first_name, last_name, and full_name, which would be mandatory and which would be optional?  Can that be expressed in XSD?

Good point!  I think we would have to make them all optional.

—Ping

[Mark Prutsalis]

On 10/21/2010 12:55 PM, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:

Ping, PFIF 1.1 says, "In a person element, the fields person_record_id, first_name, and last_name are mandatory. All other fields are optional."

With first_name, last_name, and full_name, which would be mandatory and which would be optional?� Can that be expressed in XSD?

Good point! �I think we would have to make them all optional.

I think you have to make at least one name field required.� But maybe not - I guess it is foreseeable that someone could report their neighbor or their postman or guy who works at walmart as being missing without knowing his or her first, last, nickname, etc.).� In which case, this information would go into a descriptive "other" field.

If we agree that it should be so (one name field required), my vote would be for the full name field as there are many instances where what constitutes a "first_name" or a "last_name" might be unclear or unknown.� Requiring the full name field be completed would only require that some name or part of a name is entered to identify an individual that searches could be run against.

Mark

[Ka-Ping Yee]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:46, Mark Prutsalis <ma...@sahanafoundation.org> wrote:

On 10/21/2010 12:55 PM, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:

Ping, PFIF 1.1 says, "In a person element, the fields person_record_id, first_name, and last_name are mandatory. All other fields are optional."

With first_name, last_name, and full_name, which would be mandatory and which would be optional?  Can that be expressed in XSD?

Good point!  I think we would have to make them all optional.

I think you have to make at least one name field required.  But maybe not - I guess it is foreseeable that someone could report their neighbor or their postman or guy who works at walmart as being missing without knowing his or her first, last, nickname, etc.).  In which case, this information would go into a descriptive "other" field.

I'm sorry, I wasn't very clear in my reply.  I was replying only to the question about XSD: I believe that it isn't possible to express, in XSD, this kind of "require at least 1 of n" condition.  Assuming we want to provide an XML schema for PFIF, we have to make the optionality decision for each field separately.  Thus, for example, we could choose to make <full_name> always required, and the others optional.

If we want to choose one field to be required, I also think that <full_name> is the nicest choice from a design point of view; the only drawback is that PFIF 1.2 data would not be valid PFIF 1.3.  Presumably, records would be converted to PFIF 1.3 by setting full_name = first_name + " " + last_name.

Any other opinions on whether to make any of these fields required?

—Ping