[Data-modeling] software versions/releases in the computer domain?

[Tom Morris]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Ed Laurent <spatial.db at gmail.com> wrote:

> Brendan, I think you've bumped into another instance of Freebase focusing on
> "current" information while ignoring everything that came before and not
> documenting the currentness (it's a word, look it up!) of the data. While
> this certainly keeps the schema simple and approachable to a wide audience,
> I'm not sold on it being the best default approach to modeling over the long
> term.

I'm almost certain it's not.  Any queries asking for the "current"
value should actually be asking for "current as of ___."  Similarly,
having something called "current value" or similar in schemas is just
tempting people to be lazy and not specify the dates over which the
value is/was valid.  Even if they just pick "today" for the date valid
and the system fills in today's date, we'll be ahead of the game as
compared to having it unspecified and having to guess at some point
the future what "current" meant when the data was entered.

Tom