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→JohnBoyTheGreat 2019-12, version 5.1.1
=== JohnBoyTheGreat 2019-12, version 5.1.1 ===
Import tested with the [https://mhss.sk.ca/FH/GRANDMA.shtml GRANDMA Mennonite database] of 1.4 million people. by user on reddit!! https://www.reddit.com/r/gramps/comments/dzevcl/database_size_limit_for_gramps/fb6hdbj/
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FOLLOWUP...
It's been a few weeks since I asked whether anyone had attempted to use GRAMPS with the GRANDMA Mennonite database of 1.4 million people.
Based upon the suggestion above, I tried to load the Catalog of Life database...it took several days and it seemed to be working, but it eventually locked up GRAMPS. However, it seemed to be working. But, since I was only loading the Catalog of Life to test it, I decided not to waste time trying again.
In the meantime, I had ordered the GRANDMA database, but the organization selling it somehow gave me a bad download code and I couldn't reach them for several days (holiday and weekend). It was more than a week later before I was able to try loading the GRANDMA database into GRAMPS.
The result was SUCCESS!
It took about three days to load the GRANDMA database into GRAMPS, after giving GRAMPS a realtime priority in Windows. Setting GRAMPS to realtime sped up the loading considerably. My computer is rather fast compared to many, so anyone who wants to do the same thing should consider that it could take a week or longer to load up a huge database like GRANDMA.
At this point I have the GRANDMA database loaded into GRAMPS and running okay. It's really slow to switch to various functions, but it works okay once you get to each part of the GRAMPS program. One difficulty I ran into was scrolling through the 1.4 million records. It moves through the records quickly, but there are so many that you can't just use your cursor to pull to the surname you want to explore. Instead, I have to move the slider to a surname as close as possible, then scroll repeatedly until I find it. That can be 10-20 spins of the mouse wheel, so the process can be exhausting when you are looking for many different names.
My next step is going to be to copy the individual profiles which I need to a second family tree database that will be much, much smaller.
CONCLUSION: GRAMPS can handle 1.4 million records in a database. It's slow and takes several days to load, but it works.
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== Possible Future Optimizations ==
