As many of you will have gathered by reading this blog I am an avid genealogist.  I have been researching my family tree for longer than I have been developing software for a living.  At one time I even considered a career as a Professional Genealogy Researcher.

I have made many attempts to combine my two passions – and recently I launched a new Open Source Project on Codeplex – The Family Tree Project.

This project has a number of goals.

1. Create an ASP.NET MVC sample application to manage genealogical data.
2. Create a DotNetNuke Module, using the MVP (Model View Presenter) pattern
3. Create a common Business and Data Layer that can be used by both the MVC application and the DotNetNuke module
4. Provide a full set of Unit Tests
5. Develop a .NET Library for working with GEDCOM files – GEDCOM is a standard file format for the interchange of Genealogical Data

Ultimately the goal for this project is to provide users with the tools to manage their genealogical data online, whether through a standard Web Application (MVC) or through a DotNetNuke site (DNN module).

While all the code is currently available on the Codeplex site, it doesn’t yet do very much – it is basically in a proof of concept stage.  It has 50 tests, which cover about 65% of the code.

Yesterday I upgraded the MVC portion to support the latest preview (Preview 5), and after I return from Open Force Europe next month I hope to be able to flesh the project out and provide a little more functionality.

And I will be blogging about my progress.