Definition
If you have ever gotten your passport stamped, or gotten a ticket of some sort you will notice they usually come with a date and or time. This DateTime is known as a timestamp.
Take that concept and bring it into the software domain and its meaning doesn't change much except it is used to mark the occurrence of technical events.
Use Cases and Examples.
Timestamps are heavily used to mark when database [→] entries are made and updated. They are also used to mark when log entries are made.
Essentially if you ever needed to know when an event occurred, it will be of value to keep a timestamp.
Time stamps have different formats but usually comes in some combination of data and time.
A few examples include the unix timestamp which is the measure of time in seconds since January 1st, 1970 to the time the record is made.
Other familiar formats include the dd/mm/yyyy HH:mm:ss format that captures the day, month, year and time down to the second.
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