Time Dimensions

Natural Time

Natural Time is the primary time axis and indicates when something has been observed or is predicted to happen.

For example, imagine that the temperature that was measured yesterday at 1pm was 60 degrees, or the temperature tomorrow at 4pm is forecasted to be 65 degrees. Both of these times are considered to be natural times. Note that in the Myst Platform, natural time is often referred to simply as "time".

As Of Time

As Of Time indicates from which point in time you are making observations or predictions.

For example, imagine that yesterday at 10am, today's average temperature was forecasted to be 60 degrees, and yesterday at 4pm, it was forecasted to be 61 degrees. Note that the two forecasts in this example share the same natural time (i.e. today), but have a different as of time (i.e. yesterday at 10am versus yesterday at 4pm).

Sample Period

All nodes in the Myst Platform will always contain uniformly sampled data. This means that each node has an associated Sample Period (e.g. one hour) and data can only be stored for discrete time intervals that are based on this sample period (e.g. every hour). This applies to the natural time frequency and as of time frequency for each node.