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Bitemporal Indexing

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Bi-temporal access methods

Definition

A bi-temporal index is a data structure that supports both temporal time dimensions, namely, transaction time (the time when a fact is stored in the database) and valid time (the time when a fact becomes valid in reality). The characteristics of the time dimensions supported imply various properties that the bi-temporal index should have to be efficient. As traditional indices, the performance of a temporal index is described by three costs: (i) storage cost (i.e., the number of pages the index occupies on the disk), (ii) update cost (the number of pages accessed to perform an update on the index, e.g., when adding, deleting, or updating a record), and (iii) query cost (the number of pages accessed for the index to answer a query).

Historical Background

Most of the early work on temporal indexing has concentrated on providing solutions for transaction-time databases. A basic property of transaction time is that it always increases. Each...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciencia da Computaçao, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais – UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

    Mirella M. Moro

  2. University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Vassilis J. Tsotras

Authors
  1. Mirella M. Moro
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  2. Vassilis J. Tsotras
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mirella M. Moro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

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

    Ling Liu

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

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Richard T. Snodgrass

  2. Aalborg University, Aalborg Øst, Denmark

    Christian S. Jensen

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Moro, M.M., Tsotras, V.J. (2018). Bitemporal Indexing. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1514

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