Data changes occur over time and are independent of their relationship to other data. The changes to data result in a new period of effectiveness or an updated period of effectiveness for the past, present, or future. The timeline feature lets you track these changes to data over a period of time.

For example, John Smith lived in Los Angeles effective from 31 January 2008 to 20 October 2010. He now lives in San Francisco effective from 21 October 2010. He will live in Las Vegas effective from 25 November 2014. Use timelines to track past, present, and future changes to data such as the address data of John Smith.

Timeline capabilities provide a two dimensional visibility into data, based on the period of effectiveness and history. The period of effectiveness for a record is defined by the effective start date and the effective end date of a base object record. History is a date from the history of a record for which you need to view the value. You can manage data events of business entities, such as customer address, phone number, and their relationships, by enabling timeline for relevant base objects. To enable the timeline for a child base object, you must first enable the timeline for the parent base object. The MDM Hub uses the cross-reference (XREF) tables that are associated with the timeline-enabled base objects to maintain the effective periods for the base object records.

For more information, see the

Multidomain MDM Configuration Guide

.