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Re:Show HN: TheBigDB - A simpler open database of facts by hcarvalhoalves on Thursday April 04, 2013 @05:40PM (#5495485)
> The easiest example is this: We're in 2010. X has been married to Y since 2009; In the DB it would be represented exactly like that: a "from" time period, no "to" time period, meaning "it is still true now".

This is not a fact database. This is:

    X Married Y 2009-01-01
    X Divorced Y 2013-01-01
This way you can represent any number of facts:

    X Married Y 2013-02-01
Think how convoluted it would be for you to represent X and Y marrying again in your example, if not outright wrong (because you update/delete information).
Re:Show HN: TheBigDB - A simpler open database of facts by christophe971 on Thursday April 04, 2013 @07:08PM (#5495883)
I can be wrong, but being in a state of marriage with Y is a fact. And since the DB handle time periods, with my way you can actually search who X is married to with one request, without checking if he divorced, if Y is dead, disappeared, or else.
Re:Show HN: TheBigDB - A simpler open database of facts by hcarvalhoalves on Thursday April 04, 2013 @07:41PM (#5496000)
> I can be wrong, but being in a state of marriage with Y is a fact.

This is akin to your bank storing the total amount of your account in their database, instead of the transaction history and deriving the total from that.

There's nothing wrong with that, until there is.

Consider this situation: X marries Y, divorces, marries again. Now you would have the date of divorce prior to the date of marriage. How do you make sense of this data?

> And since the DB handle time periods, with my way you can actually search who X is married to with one request, without checking if he divorced, if Y is dead, disappeared, or else.

The fact Y is dead doesn't mean X wasn't married to it. So despite the obvious technical implications of keeping all this data in sync (e.g., Y dies so you would update X to reflect that?), you're simply obliterating information. A fact is immutable, therefore a fact database, by definition, only appends, never updates.

It is, indeed, a hard problem.