A framework for developing temporal databases

Abstract

Computerised information systems tend to become more sophisticated and complicated. In many application domains, information systems must manage data that change over time, or data that reflect the use of temporal attributes. For these reasons the domain of temporal databases is an active research field. In this paper we present TGDB, a framework for developing temporal database systems that manage both valid and transaction time as well as any kind of user defined time. TGDB offers to the user a relational-like view of the tables and fields, but it is not based on the relational model. Instead it is based on the TGS graph system for time management. TGS combines a very good performance with temporal data management independent from application or domain. The query language of TGDB is an extension of SQL.