Methods and systems for managing data records through a concept of families
are provided. Example embodiments provide an enhanced record management system,
a Data Family Record Management System ("DFRMS"), which maintains families of data.
In one embodiment, the DFRMS comprises a command interface, an auto de-duplication
engine, a query engine, and one or more data repositories. The DFRMS automatically
processes imported data to insure a clean data repository and the management of
the families of data. Each new data record is normalized, automatically inspected
for related data records, automatically de-duped, and then added to a family when
appropriate. Related data records can be directly related or indirectly related,
for example, through multiply nested, embedded relationships. Once established,
the family associations in the data repository are used to retrieve data records
in response to user queries, such as to retrieve only a selected set of records
from each family or from a selected set of families.