eonbased

Eonbased is a term used in discussions of temporal data management to describe a design approach that organizes time into long-duration units called eons. It is intended to support long-term data retention, historical analysis across many eras, and resilience against rapid obsolescence of timekeeping schemes.

In an eonbased model, each data item stores values and metadata across successive eons. Time queries are expressed in eon terms, such as "between the third and fifth eon," rather than specific timestamps. This enables coarse-grained archival workflows while preserving newer granularity in recent eons.

Architecture emphasizes immutable storage, policy-driven aging, and cross-eon consistency. An eon index or catalog maps eons to stored fragments, with compaction and deduplication to manage storage growth. Versioning can be per eon, with mechanisms to reconstruct historical states by stitching together eon-level records.

Applications include climate and environmental data repositories, long-running simulations, cultural heritage archives, and legal or compliance records where retention spans may exceed typical human timescales.

Challenges include designing intuitive queries for users accustomed to standard timestamps, integrating with existing databases, performance trade-offs for fine-grained access, and ensuring data integrity across eons.

The concept is primarily discussed in academic and experimental contexts rather than as a widely adopted standard. See also: temporal databases, time-series databases.