<p>What is a preferred way to store recurring time windows? <br />
For example. If I have a calendar system where I need to be able to accommodate daily, weekly or monthly recurring events, what sort of time management system is best? <br /><br />
How is this best represented in a database? </p>

<p><strong>More Details</strong> <br />
The Specific goal of this is to provide sets of open time windows. Once we have these time windows, the code needs to test if a message that arrives to the system falls within one of the time windows.</p>

It's like boost::ref, as far as I know. Basically, a reference which can be copied. Very useful when binding to functions where you need to pass parameters by reference.
For example (using boost syntax):
```
```
void Increment( int& iValue )
{
    iValue++;
}

int iVariable = 0;
boost::function< void () > fIncrementMyVariable = boost::bind( &Increment, boost::ref( iVariable ));

fIncrementMyVariable();
```
```
This Dr. Dobbs article
has some info.
Hope this is right, and helpful. :)