[Data-modeling] Events

[Tom Morris]

> As I see it (now), the fundamental building block is just a time period
> which is simply two date/times, a start and an end.

I think there are classes of events which are basically considered
instantaneous, so a duration shouldn't be mandatory.  For example,
childbirth can be a long, involved process, but a birth certificate
will typically have just a single date and time which is considered
the official time of birth.

> Currently the /time/event includes additional properties such as "Location"
> and "People involved" which I don't think should necessarily be on the event type.

I agree that events don't necessarily involve people, but I'm hard
pressed to think of an event which doesn't happen at a location,
however ill defined that location might be (e.g. Earth, our solar
system, etc).

> For added thought, I'd like to point you at an article that Robert sent to me
> about Events, and about 9/11 and how many events actually occurred when
> the planes hit the towers.

A lot depends on your perspective and the level of detail at which you
are modeling things.  If you were considering things from the
perspective of the thousands who died, you might find that the
"correct" answer was not one event or two events, but thousands of
events, each occurring at different time and place (presuming you were
recording at sufficient precision).

Tom