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Transaction Time

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Registration time; Extrinsic time; Physical time; Transaction commit time; Belief time

Definition

A database fact is stored in a database at some point in time, and after it is stored, it remains current, or part of the current database state, until it is logically deleted. The transaction time of a database fact is the time when the fact is current in the database. As a consequence, the transaction time of a fact is generally not a time instant, but rather has duration.

The transaction time of a fact cannot extend into the future. Also, as it is impossible to change the past, meaning that (past) transaction times cannot be changed.

In the context of a database management system that supports user transactions, the transaction times of facts are consistent with the serialization order of the transactions that inserted or logically deleted them. Transaction times may be implemented using transaction commit times, and are system-generated and -supplied.

Key Points

A database is...

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Recommended Reading

  1. C.S. and Jensen C.E. (eds.). Dyreson A consensus glossary of temporal database concepts – February 1998 version. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 367–405.1998, In Temporal Databases: Research and Practice, O. Etzion, S. Jajodia, S. Sripada (eds.). LNCS 1399,

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  2. Snodgrass R.T. and Ahn I. A taxonomy of time in databases. In Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int. Conf. on Management of Data, 1985, pp. 236–246.

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  3. Snodgrass R.T. and Ahn I. Temporal databases. IEEE Comput., 19(9):35–42, September 1986.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Christian S. Jensen

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Richard T. Snodgrass

Authors
  1. Christian S. Jensen
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  2. Richard T. Snodgrass
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Jensen, C.S., Snodgrass, R.T. (2009). Transaction Time. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1064

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