What is State? Data and Programming

About

State are the attribute values of a thing (entity) at a given moment.

A State can be seen as a snapshot of values at a precise moment.

Example

• File:
  • if a line was added to a file, the file has a new state
  • if the owner changed, the file has a new state
• Variable:
  • if a variable has a new value, the variable has a new state
• A on/off button has two states:

State modification

You can modify the state only in 2 ways:

• event-driven
• state driven

Reactive / Event-Driven

Tracking the changes to values as your program runs and propagating this change is called reactive programming.

And is the core of event-driven data application.

Lifecycle / State driven

Automata models computing devices or machines through state transition. See Automata - State

A entity may have several related primary state stored in a attribute called status that forms together a lifecyle(ie automata)

State History

See Data - History (Versioning) - Historical Data

Documentation / Reference

• Data on the Outside versus Data on the Inside - Pat Helland