Re:Bitemporal History
by jka on Friday April 09, 2021 @03:23PM
(#26754904)
Sure, I can appreciate that native support for a feature like this is nice.
As I understand it, most implementations (including another one for bitemporality[1]) involve either audit tables, as you mention, and/or additional support columns. It's as if the "now" representation is simply a narrowed view within the full set of underlying, (bi)temporal data.
That said, PostgreSQL encodes and has battle-tested decades of database functionality, including a surrounding ecosystem, so I'd be a little wary of switching technology even if it does solve one individual problem thoroughly. Everything has to start somewhere, though.
Re:Bitemporal History
by jka on Sunday April 11, 2021 @09:05AM
(#26770075)
Perhaps this was an overly-skeptical perspective. Datalog (as featured in Crux) has certainly existed as a concept for a long time, although it hasn't (as far as I can tell) seen popular uptake.
As I understand it, most implementations (including another one for bitemporality[1]) involve either audit tables, as you mention, and/or additional support columns. It's as if the "now" representation is simply a narrowed view within the full set of underlying, (bi)temporal data.
That said, PostgreSQL encodes and has battle-tested decades of database functionality, including a surrounding ecosystem, so I'd be a little wary of switching technology even if it does solve one individual problem thoroughly. Everything has to start somewhere, though.
[1] - https://github.com/scalegenius/pg_bitemporal