Principles of Reporting Systems: It's About Time we Talked About Bitemporality
summary
Argues that bitemporal/full temporality makes reports reproducible and provable: capture both natural time and observation time so reruns explain value changes. Demonstrates a concrete implementation using Postgres temporal tables (add an as_of timestamp range, create a history table, add triggers) that transparently warehouses old rows. Shows this fixes real failures—example: month‑end P&L reruns with postdated market marks—and reports that the trigger+history approach works well in practice to restore past states and explain why numbers changed.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Reporting systems introduction
- 5:34Principle of Providence
- 14:40Bitemporal modeling
- 20:36Full temporality in databases
- 32:48Temporality builds user confidence
- 35:57Business value of predictable reports
- 36:18Q&A on versioning
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