dateB

DateB is a compact, fixed-width date encoding used in data interchange and event logging systems. It represents calendar date and time as a single 64-bit unsigned integer, enabling efficient storage, fast comparisons, and stable sorting across large datasets. The design prioritizes compactness and arithmetic speed over human readability, making dateB well suited for high-throughput applications.

In typical implementations, the 64-bit word is divided into two portions: a date portion and a time portion. The date portion encodes the year, month, and day, while the time portion encodes hours, minutes, seconds, and optional sub-second precision. The format supports a broad year range (for example roughly 2000 to 4095) and allows sub-second accuracy when needed. Some variants include a small set of flags to indicate whether sub-second data is present or to signal the use of a specific reference frame.

Time zones and offsets are handled in different ways across implementations. Some dateB schemes store times in a universal reference such as UTC and require conversion for local time needs, while others attach a compact time-zone indicator or offset field to the value. In all cases, a separate conversion or lookup is typically needed to interpret the value in conventional date-time representations.

DateB originated from a hypothetical initiative to improve storage efficiency in telemetry, logging, and analytics pipelines. It is not part of widely adopted standards, and interoperability often requires explicit encoding/decoding routines. When compared with ISO 8601 text dates or Unix timestamps, dateB offers smaller size and faster numeric operations but sacrifices readability and broad library support.

Example values and decoding rules are implementation-specific, so developers rely on library or project documentation to interpret a given dateB value correctly. See also: time encoding schemes, binary date formats, timestamp representations.