TY - JOUR
T1 - Reconciling point-based and interval-based semantics in temporal relational databases
T2 - A treatment of the telic/atelic distinction
AU - Terenziani, Paolo
AU - Snodgrass, Richard T.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Christian S. Jensen for stimulating discussions. US National Science Foundation grants IIS-0100436 and EIA-008013 provided partial support of this research.
PY - 2004/5
Y1 - 2004/5
N2 - The analysis of the semantics of temporal data and queries plays a central role in the area of temporal databases. Although many different algebræ and models have been proposed, almost all of them are based on a point-based (snapshot) semantics for data. On the other hand, in the areas of linguistics, philosophy, and, recently, artificial Intelligence, an oft-debated Issue concerns the use of an Interval-based versus a point-based semantics. In this paper, we first show some problems Inherent in the adoption of a point-based semantics for data, then argue that these problems arise because there is no distinction drawn in the data between telic and atelic facts. We then Introduce a three-sorted temporal model and algebra including coercion functions for transforming relations of one sort into relations of the other at query time which properly copes with these issues.
AB - The analysis of the semantics of temporal data and queries plays a central role in the area of temporal databases. Although many different algebræ and models have been proposed, almost all of them are based on a point-based (snapshot) semantics for data. On the other hand, in the areas of linguistics, philosophy, and, recently, artificial Intelligence, an oft-debated Issue concerns the use of an Interval-based versus a point-based semantics. In this paper, we first show some problems Inherent in the adoption of a point-based semantics for data, then argue that these problems arise because there is no distinction drawn in the data between telic and atelic facts. We then Introduce a three-sorted temporal model and algebra including coercion functions for transforming relations of one sort into relations of the other at query time which properly copes with these issues.
KW - Data models
KW - Database semantics
KW - Temporal databases
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U2 - 10.1109/TKDE.2004.1277816
DO - 10.1109/TKDE.2004.1277816
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:3042552244
SN - 1041-4347
VL - 16
SP - 540
EP - 551
JO - IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
IS - 5
ER -