If I were making my own software, I wouldn't slap a band-aid on this either. I'd make everything consistent and sync-able. The short term solution (if the goal is 100% sync) is to add a matching date field to FTM's citations. Step two (for me) would be an overhaul of the Sourcing system, and that would be an opportunity to readdress this issue.
Anyway, let's see if we can't make some educated guesses about the tables here, since you brought it up. I surmise the following tables from the web forms for sources and citations at Ancestry.com.
AMT's source table:
Primary Key*
Repository Foreign Key*
Title
Author
Publisher
Publisher Location
Publisher Date
Call Number
Note
REFN
AMT's citation table:
Primary Key*
Source Foreign Key*
Detail
Date
Transcription
Other Information
Web Address
The stuff with the asterisks above are key columns that I presume. I also presume that there are two other intermediate tables for citations+media and facts+citations.
FTM (ignoring for now the templates based on Mills' QuickCheck models) has a similar structure. I'll list this according to the labels used in the software.
FTM source table:
Primary Key*
Repository Foreign Key*
Title
Author
Publisher Name
Publish Date
Call Number
Comments
FTM citation table:
Primary Key*
Source Foreign Key*
Citation Detail
Citation Text
Web Address
Reference Note
Notes
(Aside: you can easily see what doesn't sync here.)
So, let's do what any user would have to do on Ancestry.com and figure out how to store your sample data in the available fields: "The Daily Newspaper Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 52 John Died" & "The Daily Newspaper Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 21 Billy Bob Died"
AMT Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
AMT Citation Table:
Date = 1 Jan 1900 (will be lost)
Detail = John Smith, obituary. Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 52
FTM Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
FTM Citation Table:
(Date is lost)
Detail = John Smith, obituary. Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 52
AMT Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
AMT Citation Table:
Date = 1 Jan 1900 (will be lost)
Detail = Billy Bob, obituary, vol. 1, issue 2, sec. 3, p. 21
FTM Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
FTM Citation Table:
(Date is lost)
Detail = Billy Bob, obituary, vol. 1, issue 2, sec. 3, p. 21
If the OP had somehow anticipated this problem, he might have put the date into his detail field, e.g., "John Smith, obituary, 1 Jan 1900, vol. 1, issue 2, sec. 3, p. 21". This format would retain the flexibility of the generic template used at Ancestry.com and still make the transition to FTM. The auto-generated sources and citations from Ancestry.com routinely use the detail field in this way for some record collections.
Marco
PS. In your examples illustrating the potential pitfalls in translating this data, you broke up the elements of the detail column in a way that suggests they might be stored in different columns themselves. I don't think that's the way it works now (still ignoring templates), but that would be nice in the future, because it would add capabilities to the Sources workspace that don't exist. Still, I suggest that's something that should be evaluated only when the whole system gets its badly needed overhaul.
Anyway, let's see if we can't make some educated guesses about the tables here, since you brought it up. I surmise the following tables from the web forms for sources and citations at Ancestry.com.
AMT's source table:
Primary Key*
Repository Foreign Key*
Title
Author
Publisher
Publisher Location
Publisher Date
Call Number
Note
REFN
AMT's citation table:
Primary Key*
Source Foreign Key*
Detail
Date
Transcription
Other Information
Web Address
The stuff with the asterisks above are key columns that I presume. I also presume that there are two other intermediate tables for citations+media and facts+citations.
FTM (ignoring for now the templates based on Mills' QuickCheck models) has a similar structure. I'll list this according to the labels used in the software.
FTM source table:
Primary Key*
Repository Foreign Key*
Title
Author
Publisher Name
Publish Date
Call Number
Comments
FTM citation table:
Primary Key*
Source Foreign Key*
Citation Detail
Citation Text
Web Address
Reference Note
Notes
(Aside: you can easily see what doesn't sync here.)
So, let's do what any user would have to do on Ancestry.com and figure out how to store your sample data in the available fields: "The Daily Newspaper Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 52 John Died" & "The Daily Newspaper Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 21 Billy Bob Died"
AMT Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
AMT Citation Table:
Date = 1 Jan 1900 (will be lost)
Detail = John Smith, obituary. Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 52
FTM Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
FTM Citation Table:
(Date is lost)
Detail = John Smith, obituary. Vol 1 Issue 2 Section 3 Page 52
AMT Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
AMT Citation Table:
Date = 1 Jan 1900 (will be lost)
Detail = Billy Bob, obituary, vol. 1, issue 2, sec. 3, p. 21
FTM Source Table:
Title = "The Daily Newspaper
FTM Citation Table:
(Date is lost)
Detail = Billy Bob, obituary, vol. 1, issue 2, sec. 3, p. 21
If the OP had somehow anticipated this problem, he might have put the date into his detail field, e.g., "John Smith, obituary, 1 Jan 1900, vol. 1, issue 2, sec. 3, p. 21". This format would retain the flexibility of the generic template used at Ancestry.com and still make the transition to FTM. The auto-generated sources and citations from Ancestry.com routinely use the detail field in this way for some record collections.
Marco
PS. In your examples illustrating the potential pitfalls in translating this data, you broke up the elements of the detail column in a way that suggests they might be stored in different columns themselves. I don't think that's the way it works now (still ignoring templates), but that would be nice in the future, because it would add capabilities to the Sources workspace that don't exist. Still, I suggest that's something that should be evaluated only when the whole system gets its badly needed overhaul.