Datumning

Datumning is a term used to describe the practice of assigning dates or timestamps to data and artifacts to establish a clear temporal context. The concept is applied across data management, data provenance, and archival science to support tracking changes, sequencing events, and enabling time-based queries. Core elements include timestamping, temporal data models, and provenance metadata. Datumning can distinguish between valid time (when something was true) and transaction time (when the data was recorded), a distinction drawn in temporal databases. Common methods include automatic timestamping upon data creation, consistent time standards such as ISO 8601, use of UTC, and standardized metadata schemas (for example, PROV-O in W3C). Applications include version control of datasets, sensor networks, climate and geological data, digital archives, legal and compliance records. Challenges include clock synchronization, time zone handling, daylight saving, privacy, storage overhead, and legal considerations. The term is relatively new and not universally standardized; it has gained traction in data governance and archival literature and should not be confused with dating in archaeology or social dating. The concept overlaps with provenance and temporal databases.

See also: timestamp, temporal database, data provenance, ISO 8601.