Re: Temporal Databases (Database design questions)

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  • M.-A. Lemburg

    Re: Temporal Databases (Database design questions)

    On 2008-06-18 09:41, David wrote:
    Question 3: Temporal databases
    >

    >
    I haven't used them before, but I like the idea of never
    deleting/updating records so you have a complete history (a bit like
    source code version control).
    >
    How well do temporal databases work? Do RDBMS (like Postgresql) need
    add-ons to make it effective, or can you just add extra temporal
    columns to all your tables and add them to your app queries? Does this
    increase app complexity and increase server load a lot?
    >
    Are there Python libraries which simplify this? (eg: add-ons for
    Elixir or SQLAlchemy).
    >
    Or should apps all implement their own 'temporal data access' module,
    which transparently uses the current date & time until queried for
    historical data?
    You can have complete history in a database schema by:

    * adding a version column
    * adding a modification timestamp (and modification username,
    if that's relevant for you)
    * updating the version upon INSERT and UPDATE
    * have a history table for each "live" table that gets
    filled using a trigger on the version column which moves
    the inserted/updated/deleted rows into the history table
    * the history table will have to have an additional column
    for storing the method of how the row got into the table
    (ie. insert/update/delete)

    The main app will only use the "live" tables with the current
    data. An audit tool would then provide access to the history
    tables.

    This works for all databases that have triggers, even SQLite.

    --
    Marc-Andre Lemburg
    eGenix.com

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