Previous Versions of Public Chauffeur and Public Passenger Vehicle Records - 8/8/2024

For many years, we have published the Public Chauffeurs and Public Passenger Vehicles licensed by the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. As of this writing, the records update multiple times per day.
Occasionally, users wish to see previous versions of the data. These have not previously been publicly available but we are launching two new datasets to address this need.
Because of the way the data are captured, it is important to understand how to use the datasets. Please read the dataset descriptions before using them but this article explains the basic idea.
Each historical dataset has the same columns as its corresponding dataset of current records, plus two additional ones: Last Valid Date and Record Version ID.
For the most part, you may ignore Record Version ID. It is present to detect whether or not the underlying record has changed.
The Last Valid Date column is the essence of the dataset. It indicates approximately when each version of the record was current but in a way that calls for some explanation. It is not when that version of the record came into existence. It is essentially when that version of the record went out of existence. More precisely, it is the most recent time that the automated job that maintains the historical dataset saw that version of the record. For the current version of a record, it will be when the job last ran and the date will update on every run.
So, to estimate when a version of a record came into existence, look at the previous Last Valid Date for the same vehicle license or chauffeur. In other words, whenever that version of the record stopped being the current one should be approximately when it was replaced by the next version. For a number of reasons--most notably more than one edit to the record between runs of the update job--this truly is an estimate, although a good one in most cases. It is not possible to determine through this technique when the first version of the record was created, although there may be clues in the record, itself.
Let's look at an example. Highlighted columns showed a change at some point prior to publication of this article.
The oldest Last Valid Date is 11/26/2014 3:00:26 AM. We cannot tell when that version of the record was created, except that is was no later than that date, of course.
The next Last Valid Date is 08/05/2016 03:00:17 AM. This, again, does not mean that version of the record was created then. It means (technically, suggests) that it was created shortly after 11/26/2014 3:00:26 AM (the previous date) and remained the current version until shortly after 08/05/2016 03:00:17 AM. It is important to pay attention to the word "shortly." At those times, the update job ran only once a day, at 3 am. So, the change could have been anytime in the next 24 hours--or, potentially, even later in some circumstances.
What changed between that version and the previous one? To find out, one must look at the other columns. In this case, the Vehicle Model changed from XB to SCION. Since all other columns stayed the same, this may have been a true change in the vehicle associated with that license or it may have been simply a correction to the record. All we know is that the record changed.
Looking at the rest of the records, it appears that the license was transferred to a new vehicle by the same owner shortly after 08/05/2016 03:00:17 AM, possibly later that day. The license then went through four more changes, involving status, vehicle, and owner before 07/20/2022 08:00:13 AM and then stayed unchanged until at least 08/08/2024, when this article was published.

For any questions, please use the Contact Dataset Owner option in the dataset or the Feedback link on any page.
Date Published: 8/8/2024
Date Last Edited: 8/8/2024
Related dataset ID(s): tx35-q6ia q9nk-vsym tfm3-3j95 97wa-y6ff