Frequently Asked Questions about GRanDMA OnLine (GMOL)

Let's start with GRanDMA. It's a database. GRanDMA's composed of tables of information: names, dates, places, and much more. Having all that data, we need some way to search and visualize the information and then to link things: a parent to a child, an individual to a family, and much more.

GRanDMA OnLine (or GMOL) is software that searches and displays information from the GRanDMA Database. GMOL has capabilities for searching for information and displaying that information in a wide variety of ways.

With GMOL, all of the work of preparing these displays is done on a server on the web. Only the display is performed in your computer.

Bottom line: GRanDMA is the information.
GRanDMA OnLine is the vehicle for viewing the information via the web.

You probably have all the equipment that you need already just in order to read this. You need a computer with a browser and a connection to the internet.

Almost any modern browser will work. (There are problems with Internet Explorer, but it's obsolete anyway.)

You also need a GRanDMA account, and there is a modest charge for access to GMOL.

Part of the money collected goes to monthly charges for the server and annual fees for the domain name.

Part goes for some equipment, primarily the independent server used for managing the master GRanDMA database.

There are also some expenses associated with software development.

All of the people who work to bring GRanDMA and GRanDMA OnLine to you are volunteers: those who develop and mange the database, the developer of the GMOL software, and the developer of new tools to accommodate the ever-growing database.

Beginning in early 2025, grants will be awarded that will support activities of value to GRanDMA and GMOL users.

This is a decision by Mennonite Genealogy, Inc.. Birthdates are withheld for individuals who are probably still living. For the most part, this follows the policy of Ancestry.com. GMOL withholds dates for individuals under the age of 90 unless a death date is available.

Occasionally errors do pop up. They can be due to programming errors or due to problems with the host server. Here is an example of an error that occurred when the host server ran out of memory:
        error '80070070' /gmol-7//loginValidation.asp, line 127
Few users would be able to interpret that message.

First, be assured that it is very unlikely that the error is caused by you or your computer or your browser.

Second, it may be just a glitch in the internet such as a short outage somewhere. Try again in a short time.

Please DO report it to the developer (Ken) by sending an email to KLRatzlaff@grandmaOnline.org. Unless Ken happens to be using the system at that time, he won't know about it without such a report.

If you report such an error, it would be quite helpful if you would note the circumstances: the previous page, the current GRanDMA number, and the error number, etc.

Usually resolution comes in a few minutes to a few hours.

Definitely. Let the developer know at KLRatzlaff@grandmaOnline.org. Ken's up for new challenges. Of course, always remember, that not everything is possible in this environment.

Let the developer know. Ken enjoys "fiddling" with the website to make it work better. Of course, always remember, that not everything is possible in this environment.

more questions? I'll work on more answers.

I (Ken) have never programmed in that environment, and at my age, I won't be starting.

However, I have tried very hard to create regular web pages that do render as well as posssible on a mobile device.

I recognize that there are a number of pages that still render poorly on mobile devices, and I will work on that now and again. Let me know if the problems are severe for a particular page.

Around 4,500 users have valid accounts to GRanDMA OnLine. You can find today's number and see the trend here.

This is an informal history of GRanDMA OnLine (of course, as I remember it.) It‘s probably more information than you wanted to know. (Ken Ratzlaff)

I became an occasional student of Prussian/Russian Mennonite history in the 1980s and ‘90s. I bought my copy of the GRanDMA database on CD, which could only be opened with Brother’s Keeper, and I both gathered data from it and contributed to it. In about 1990, while traveling from a conference in Poland, we got lucky and found the region near Warsaw that was home to some ancestors. In 1999, my wife, Ginger, and I joined the Mennonite Heritage Cruise to see Mennonite sites in southern Ukraine.

Alan Peters was on that tour as the resident genealogist, and I made the comment that the data should be on the web where it would be more accessible and readily updateable. The response by Alan and by others was that it couldn’t be done, and in 1999, that may have seemed right. GRanDMA had about a half-million entries, and the technology for home genealogists in those days was to run a program that would create a fixed page for each entry, impractical for large databases. So naturally, I thought the gauntlet had been thrown.

Professionally, I was the director of a research facility at the University of Kansas, the Instrumentation Design Laboratory where we designed scientific instrumentation and programmed in assembler and C. This was a long way from design for the web, but I figured "how hard can it be?"

So in 2000, I started learning about programmed websites and about programming them. I made a lot of mistakes, most of important of which was the choice of programming language. But I got the basics to work, and it kept developing.

In the early 2000s, the GRanDMA Committee decided to sponsor the presence as GRanDMA OnLine on a fully supported website.

I wish I was capable of leaving well enough alone, but I really enjoy programming and looking for something new to try. So I‘ll probably keep developing while I can.

Nope. Still working on it.