Research Program: Paradigms

The In-Time Paradigm

 The In-Time Paradigm attempts to document time-dependent constraint rules on relationship cardinality. Without such constraints, entity cardinality increases dramatically over time, resulting in data performance issues or premature data archiving requirements.

Rationale
  • Creating associative relationships between fundamental or attributive entities and various "time" related entity types is cumbersome.
  • If many time dependencies exist on a single project, the model becomes extremely cluttered quickly.
  • Associative entities require that the units of time involved by "hard coded" according to what time-related entity is involved.
  • Under this paradigm, these associations are modeled as attributive entities in time.
  • The levels of detail for the units of time are resolved later in the modeling process by the unique identifiers of the attributive entities.
  • In fact, time periods should be synchronized by seleting unique identifiers that are the least common denominators of the various timing factors.
  • Frequency of occurence is a process model statistic. It shouldn't be limited by hard-wiring in the logical data model.

    • Trigger
  • Existence of infinaite maximum relationship cardinalities when the entire life span of the entities is taken into account.
    • This paradigm is taught in the Quality-Based Data Modeling seminar.
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