OrdinateDB

Blog

Engineering notes.

Most of these posts existed as specs before the code did. Writing them down in public is the point.

  • 2026-06-16

    What we deliberately don't do

    Six things this project will refuse to build, the revenue idea each one forecloses, and why changing the list requires a supermajority and a public comment period.

    4 min
  • 2026-05-12

    Bitemporal honesty for plant data

    Late-arriving data meets the monthly report that already went out. Two timelines, as-of queries, and why a correction must never overwrite the value it corrects.

    5 min
  • 2026-04-14

    The case against silent compression

    Exception and compression deviation were a 1995 economics argument. A worked example of a 30-second pressure spike that a 0.5% compdev simply never wrote.

    5 min
  • 2026-03-10

    Why your totaliser is wrong by 24×

    The multiply-by-24 spreadsheet ritual, the days it silently breaks, and how counters should actually be archived: raw monotonic counts, integration at query time.

    5 min

no bylines — posts are written and reviewed by the project. British English throughout.