Temporality in databases

Abstract

Temporality, or the time dimension is an essential aspect of the reality databases attempt to model and keep data about. However, in many database applications temporal data is treated in a rather ad hoc manner in spite of the fact that temporality should be an integral part of any data model. In this presentation we will address issues peculiar to temporal data and explore how we can add a temporal dimension to databases. We will specifically focus our attention on the relational data model and the object relational systems for managing temporal data since these systems are widely available and they are also widely used.