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Temporal Query Languages

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Historical query language

Definition

A temporal query language is a database query language that offers some form of built-in support for the querying and modification of time-referenced data, as well as enabling the specification of assertions and constraints on such data. A temporal query language is usually quite closely associated with a temporal data model that defines the underlying data structures that the language applies to.

Historical Background

When the relational data model was proposed by Codd, he also proposed two query languages: relational calculus and relational algebra. Similarly, temporal data models are closely coupled with temporal query languages.

Most databases store time-referenced, or temporal, data. The ISO standard Structured Query Language SQL [5] is often the language of choice when developing applications that utilize the information captured in such databases. In spite of this, users realize that temporal data management is at times difficult...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Böhlen MH, Gamper J, Jensen CS. How would you like to aggregate your temporal data? In: Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning; 2006. p. 121–36.

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  2. Jensen CS, Soo MD, Snodgrass RT. Unifying temporal data models via a conceptual model. Inf Syst. 1994;19(7):513–47.

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  3. Kulkari K, Michels J-E. Temporal features in SQL:2011. ACM SIGMOD Rec. 2012;41(3):34–43.

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  4. McKenzie E, Snodgrass RT. An evaluation of relational algebras incorporating the time dimension in databases. ACM Comput Surv. 1991;23(4):501–43.

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  5. Melton J, Simon AR. Understanding the new SQL: a complete guide. San Mateo: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers; 1993.

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  6. Melton J (ed). ISO/IEC 9075, Database Language SQL:2011 Part 2: SQL/Foundation, Dec 2011.

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  7. Snodgrass RT (ed)., Ahn I, Ariav G, Batory D, Clifford J, Dyreson CE, Elmasri R, Grandi F, Jensen CS, Käfer W, Kline N, Kulkarni K, Leung TY, Lorentzos N, Roddick JF, Segev A, Soo MD, Sripada SM. The TSQL2 temporal query language. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers; 1995.

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  8. Snodgrass RT. Developing time-oriented database applications in SQL. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann; 1999.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Christian S. Jensen

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Richard T. Snodgrass

  3. Dataware Ventures, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Richard T. Snodgrass

Authors
  1. Christian S. Jensen
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  2. Richard T. Snodgrass
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian S. Jensen .

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

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Jensen, C.S., Snodgrass, R.T. (2018). Temporal Query Languages. 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_407

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