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This is different from the actual data changing, which does not affect the meta-
data at all. Consider the reference to a company. Over time reference is made to
the “company.” But over time that company, for any given instance in the real
world, may change. As an example, consider the company Prism Solutions. Prism
Solutions began in 1990, and then in 1995 it was acquired by Ardent Software.
Figure 1.19 shows the different changes of the “company” over time.
At different moments in time, the value of the company name for an instance
may change, but the metadata is “company” and the abstraction is still the
same. Time changes things, and it ...