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Handling Temporal Knowledge in a Deductive Database System

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Part of the book series: Informatik aktuell ((INFORMAT))

Abstract

We describe the design and implementation of a temporal deductive database system which supports (1) the storage of facts annotated with a time interval to indicate their perceived time of validity in the real world and (2) deduction rules which express temporal dependencies between (stored or derived) facts. The system features a logic-based query language in which even complex temporal queries can be expressed fairly concisely. We show how formulas involving temporal conjunction, disjunction, and negation can be translated into temporal extensions of the operators of relational algebra and into the database language SQL. A vital step in this translation is an implicit temporal normalization of intermediate results to avoid a redundant representation of temporal information which can even lead to incorrect results in certain cases.

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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Böhlen, M., Marti, R. (1993). Handling Temporal Knowledge in a Deductive Database System. In: Stucky, W., Oberweis, A. (eds) Datenbanksysteme in Büro, Technik und Wissenschaft. Informatik aktuell. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-86096-6_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-86096-6_23

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-56487-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-86096-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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