Nathan,

Archon has some of the EAC functionality built in, including the abilty to specify relationships to creators and resources.  I haven't checked this in a while, but we had spec'd it out to link both sides of the relationship when linking two name files (e.g. parent/child, predecessor/successor)--not sure if this is working but that was the intent.  So, if you are looking at a relational database as one option, you might set up a local instance of archon, then export the CPF records and if you need additional functionality, you may be able to build that in w/ some small effort on top of the existing code.

Chris Prom
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

On Feb 12, 2013, at 5:53 PM, Nathan Gibson <[log in to unmask]>
 wrote:

> We have data for about 1500 persons we want to get into EAC and be editable by a team of people. We want to include a fair amount of relational data to places, other persons, etc.
> 
> I'd be interested in opinions on how efficient it is to maintain these relationships directly in the XML files vs. using a relational database to export the EAC records with their relationships. For example, if person A has a relationship with person B, does that relationship need to be included in the EAC files for both persons (under cpfRelation)? If so, I assume that creating, modifying, or deleting that relationship would need to be done in both records. This is where I wonder whether a relational database is more efficient.
> 
> Thanks,
> Nathan