Tidsbasen

Tidsbasen is a term used in Swedish information management to describe a centralized repository designed to store temporally tagged data for time-aware analysis across domains. It combines a traditional database with temporal features such as validity intervals and version history, allowing queries that reflect data as it existed at a specific time or how it changed over time.

The core elements of a tidsbasen include timestamps, valid-time or transaction-time intervals, and a version identifier. Metadata about provenance, data quality, and data lineage is typically maintained to support auditability and reproducibility. The data model supports temporal queries such as time-based slicing, interval joins, and historical lookups, and it often integrates with data catalogs and metadata registries to facilitate discovery and governance.

Governance and access are central to tidsbasen implementations. They are usually governed by national or institutional data governance policies, with emphasis on privacy, security, data quality, and interoperability. Access is commonly provided through standardized APIs, controlled data access procedures, and federated identity mechanisms. In practice, tidsbasen serves researchers, public administrations, and organizations that require reliable historical records and traceable data evolution.

Common use cases include statistical analysis over time, environmental monitoring, urban planning, and digital archives. Challenges include ensuring semantic consistency across data sources, maintaining data quality, handling large time-series volumes, and aligning policies for retention and privacy.

See also: temporal database, time series database, data governance, data provenance, versioning.