Hi,

I'm currently working on a service that will receive data in the form of time stamps from lifts (through a unit called a liftlog).

All data will show up as discrete events. However, in some cases we want to plot the data as having a duration.

For instance, to know how long a lift has been out of order, we would take the difference in seconds between a single event H (lift back in service) and a single event G (lift goes out of order).

I've been presented with the daunting task of finding a way to graph this using bars on a timeline so that it doesn't show up as two separate events G and H, but as the duration H-G. It is meant to look something like this:

EventTimeLineSample.png

Where the yellow and red extended bars in the middle represent two events with duration, which I in some way have to make happen using the discrete start and end points of two different data records.

And yes, to make this even more confusing, they want me to plot them on a timeline which also displays events which are indeed just discrete (the blue bar, for instance, is meant to indicate the pressing of an emergency button - no duration here!)

But a first step would be to find out how data records might be joined to indicate duration in the manner described.

Many thanks in advance!