As-Known Reporting

Past reports can be rewritten by future knowledge.

A historical report can show either the corrected truth known today or the information that was known when the report was originally produced.

Both perspectives can be valid, but they answer different questions and must not be mixed accidentally.

A January report should not use a correction that arrived in March.

Compare corrected truth with the original January knowledge state.

As-known reporting uses both a business date and a knowledge date.

Business-valid time describes when a value was true. Visible time describes when that value became available to the reporting system.

select
  customer_id,
  segment
from customer_history
where :reporting_date >= valid_from
  and :reporting_date <  valid_to
  and :knowledge_date >= visible_from
  and :knowledge_date <  visible_to;

Business time and knowledge time are different.

A correction can be valid for January and still arrive in March. The business date and the knowledge date therefore describe different aspects of the same fact.

If a report rebuild ignores the knowledge cutoff, it can use information that did not exist when the original report was produced.

Make the reporting perspective explicit.

Use as-known reporting when historical knowledge must remain reproducible.

Verify that future knowledge does not leak into past reports.

As-known reporting gives historical correctness a precise meaning.

It lets engineers, business users and auditors distinguish between the best truth available today and the information that was available at an earlier point in time.

This distinction is one of the main reasons to use visible-time or bitemporal modeling.

How As-Known Reporting connects to other historical patterns

As-known reporting is the reporting behavior enabled by visible-time history, correction semantics and reproducible snapshot logic.