Bitemporal Interval

Definition

Facts in a bitemporal database may be timestamped by time values that are products of time intervals drawn from two orthogonal time domains that model valid time and transaction time, respectively. A bitemporal interval then is given by an interval from the valid-time domain and an interval from the transaction-time domain, and denotes a rectangle in the two-dimensional space spanned by valid and transaction time.

When associated with a fact, a bitemporal interval then identifies an interval (valid time) during which that fact held (or holds or will hold) true in reality, as well as identifies an interval (transaction time) when that belief (that the fact was true during the specified valid-time interval) was held, i.e., was part of the current database state.

Key Points

In this definition, a time interval denotes a convex subset of the time domain. Assuming a discrete time domain, a bitemporal interval can be represented with a non-empty set of bitemporal chronons or...