I’m preparing a presentation on Time for the Fox Valley Pass group next week. I thought it might be nice to provide a little preview on the topic.
One of my favorite characteristics of time is that it never stands still. What you do tomorrow will be yesterday, two days from now. The point is that time is durable. In Greek grammar, it can have the Aorist tense. It is defined as a continuing action. Or, it may be a completed action with continuing results.
There are so many things important to us which have a factor, or dimension of time: bills, taxes, paychecks, sales, age, anniversaries, performance, etc. All of these things have value. More important, the value they represent is most often characterized in the dimension of time.
It is important when designing a database that you are able to accurately represent the dimension of time when relating to your data. This is a factor that is often relegated to an additional feature as part of the design. It should, however, be taken into consideration as part of your initial design in order to get the best benefit.
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at date and time considerations a little more closely.
Feel free to add your thoughts on the topic to our online comments, or drop an email to btaylor@sswug.rorg.
Cheers,
Ben