16 - Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter concludes the book that focuses on temporal data management by use of Asserted Versioning. The objectives for this book were to explain how to support seamless access to temporal data, the encapsulation of temporal data structures and processes, the internalization of pipeline datasets, and the enterprise contextualization of this functionality. Asserted Versioning provides real-time seamless access to the full range of bitemporal data. Asserted version tables can contain any number of rows representing the same object, and those tables can include rows from any or all of those nine bitemporal categories. This means that when data about one or more objects, in any of those categories, is requested, all of that data is immediately available and ready to be queried. Asserted Versioning shields data modelers from this temporal design work by means of its support for design encapsulation. Asserted Versioning supports the semantics of the internalization of pipeline datasets, by supporting queries that make both semantic logfile data and physical logfile data available. It also supports a table-specific physical logfile. With all these various physical datasets internalized within the production tables they are directed to or derived from, Asserted Versioning eliminates the cost of managing them as distinct physical data objects. Asserted Versioning is an enterprise solution for provision of queryable bitemporal data. It enforces the same temporal integrity constraints, across all tables and all databases, and provides a standard way to ask for unitemporal or bitemporal data.