Our latest paper is now available, entitled “Modeling Conflicting, Unreliable, and Varying Information”, in which Transitional Modeling is formalized. It can either be viewed and referenced on ResearchGate or downloaded directly from here. Much of what is found in the paper has been part of our courses since we began certifications, and is also available in the online course, but new research from the last couple of years has also been added.
ABSTRACT
Most persistent memories in which bodies of information are stored can only provide a view of that information as it currently is, from a single point of view, and with no respect to its reliability. This is a poor reflection of reality, because information changes over time, may have many and possibly disagreeing origins, and is far from often certain. Hereat, this paper introduces a modeling technique that manages conflicting, unreliable, and varying information. In order to do so, the concept of a “single version of the truth” must be abandoned and replaced by an equivocal theory that respects the genuine nature of information. Through such, information can be seen from different and concurrent perspectives, where each statement has been given a reliability ranging from being certain of its truth to being certain of its opposite, and when that reliability or the information itself varies over time, changes are managed non-destructively, making it possible to retrieve everything as it was at any given point in time. As a result, other techniques are, among them third normal form, anchor modeling, and data vault, contained as special cases of the henceforth entitled transitional modeling.
We hope you all will have fun with transitional modeling, as our research continues, particularly with respect to how it should fit into a database, relational or not.