Hello Martin, Given the use case described, would it be useful to promote a best practice of translating the "current" properties in those collection databases into an event with an earliest date derived from when the item entered the collection?
For some value of "entered the collection" = first documented in that collection/physically crossed the doorstep/etc (but CRM can cope with adding notes to this effect, can't it?) This would allow you to make a monotonic statement about a genuinely "current" situation without including that (superfluous) context in the data. Wouldn't it? I'm just thinking pragmatically as someone now fairly well steeped in the world of commercial product identification... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 List-Post: [email protected] Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:11:03 +0200 From: martin <[email protected]> Subject: [Crm-sig] Fwd: Re: homework To: crm-sig <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> [snip] However, for some of these properties many collection databases describe the "current" state, such as "current location" or "current owner". Using such a "current" state means, that the database manager is able to verify the respective reality at the latest date of validity of the database. Obviously, this information is non-monotonic, i.e., it requires deletion when the state changes. In order to preserve a reduced monotonicity, these properties have time-neutral superproperties by which respective instances can be reclassified if the validity becomes unknown or no longer holds. Therefore the use of such properties in the CRM is only recommended if they can be maintained consistently. Otherwise, they should be reclassified by their time-neutral superproperties. This holds in particular if data is exported to another repository." [snip]
