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Temporal Algebras

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Bitemporal algebras; Historical algebras; Transaction-time algebras; Valid-time algebras

Definition

Temporal algebra is a generic term for an algebra defined for a data model that organizes temporal data. A temporal data model may support valid-time (the time over which a data value is valid), transaction-time (time when a data value is recorded in the database), or both (bitemporal). So an algebra can be defined for each case, a valid-time relational algebra, a transaction-time relational algebra, or a bitemporal relational algebra, respectively. For the relational data model, temporal algebras include the temporal versions of relational algebra operations in addition to new operations for manipulating temporal data like time-slice, rollback, temporal coalesce, temporal restructuring operations, and others. For a temporal algebra, it is desirable to be closed (common algebras are closed), a consistent extension of the relational algebra, and to reduce to relational algebra...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA

    Abdullah Uz Tansel

Authors
  1. Abdullah Uz Tansel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abdullah Uz Tansel .

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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Tansel, A.U. (2018). Temporal Algebras. 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_387

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