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Abstract Versus Concrete Temporal Query Languages

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Historical query languages

Definition

Temporal query languages are a family of query languages designed to query (and access in general) time-dependent information stored in temporal databases. The languages are commonly defined as extensions of standard query languages for non-temporal databases with temporal features. The additional features reflect the way dependencies of data on time are captured by and represented in the underlying temporal data model.

Historical Background

Most databases store time-varying information. On the other hand, SQL is often the language of choice for developing applications that utilize the information in these databases. Plain SQL, however, does not seem to provide adequate support for temporal applications.

Example

To represent the employment histories of persons, a common relational design would use a schema

$$ \begin{aligned}...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Jan Chomicki

  2. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    David Toman

Authors
  1. Jan Chomicki
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  2. David Toman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Chomicki .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Richard T. Snodgrass

  2. Aalborg University, Selma Lagerlöfs Vej 300, DK-9220, Aalborg Øst, Denmark

    Christian S. Jensen Ph.D.

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Chomicki, J., Toman, D. (2016). Abstract Versus Concrete Temporal Query Languages. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1559-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_1559-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

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