IBM calls it “generation data sets”. Essentially a dataset, typically a file, is tagged with a G00V00 ‘G’ for generation and ‘V’ for version. I’ve implemented a variation of this model where the G00 is actually the date. Currently Gmmdd where mm is the month and dd is the day of the month. Where the IBM model is limited to 10K verions you could not have holes in the numbering (a different advantage). But if the dataset represented a data warehouse extract knowing the extract date and maybe the sample version would also have some meaning. In one reporting engine there is an option to append the system date to the filename not relying on the filesystem attributes. It just depends on how you would use it.