Data with variable precision

Neo4j Graph Platform Modeling
1

In the application I'm working on, there are some fields where the available data is sometimes very precise and sometimes less precise.

For example - I know my own birth date and time, but for some of my ancestors know only the date or even only the year.

Another example - I know the exact street address where I was born, but might know only a town, or even only the country for some of my ancestors.

Is there a standard approach for storing data like this? If not, are there commonly used techniques?

2

I suggest you store each bit of information as individual properties. That way you can store what you have and refine them if/when you get additional information. Neo4j has Date and Time types, so you can store birthdates separately from birth time.

3

There isn't any standard for this that I've been able to find, though there are folks who deal with this in various ways - libraries with very old books, whose publication dates are uncertain, and genealogy/family history types.

Many of the groups use text based formats, which don't really work for a DB app where searches are a key feature.

So I'm going to experiment with using a single date field that represents either the exact date or date/time, the approximate date (as best as known), or the beginning of the range. There will be a second field that uses codes to qualify the precision of the date value and/or the size of the range.

One of the groups used a similar thing, though they specified that the date was end of the time range. I'm not sure if it matters.