entriesat

Entriesat is a term used in computing to describe a mechanism for retrieving records by their exact timestamp. It is commonly encountered in time-series databases, event stores, journaling applications, and API layers that expose time-based queries. The word is a portmanteau of entry and at, reflecting the idea of selecting entries at a specific moment or within a defined time window.

In practice, an entriesat operation accepts a timestamp (and optionally a precision or range) and returns the subset of entries whose timestamp matches the criterion. Implementations may expose it as a database query, a function named entriesAt or entriesat, or as a REST or GraphQL endpoint parameter. Performance considerations include index design on the timestamp field, partitioning by time intervals, and handling time zones and daylight saving time.

Typical use cases include audit trails, sensor data retrieval, and event replay in event-sourced systems. Examples include retrieving all sensor readings at 2024-05-01T12:00:00Z or within a specified short interval around that moment. Limitations can arise in high-frequency data where exact matches are rare or where clock synchronization, time zone differences, or varying timestamp precision affect results. Related concepts encompass time-series database indexing, event sourcing, and snapshotting, which together influence how entriesat queries are planned and executed.