A comparison of historical relational query languages

Abstract

We introduce a historical relational data model in which N1NF relations are used and 1-level of nesting is allowed. Attributes can either be atomic or temporal atom. An atomic attribute represents a time invariant attribute. A temporal atom consists of two components, a value and a temporal set, which is a set of times denoting the validity period of the value. We define a relational tuple calculus for this model. We follow a comparative approach towards completeness of historical query languages.