A Relational Model for the Possibilistic Valid-time Approach

Abstract

In real world, it is very common that some objects or concepts have properties with a time-variant or timerelated nature. Modelling this kind of objects or concepts in a (relational) database schema is possible, but time-variant and time-related attributes have an impact on the consistency of the entire database and must be appropriately managed. Therefore, temporal database models have been proposed to deal with this problem in the literature. Time can be affected by imprecision, vagueness and / or uncertainty, since existing time measuring devices are inherently imperfect. Additionally, human beings manage time using temporal indications and temporal notions, which may also be imprecise. However, the imperfection in human-used temporal indications is supported by human interpretation, whereas information systems need appropriate support in order to accomplish this task. Several proposals for dealing with such imperfections when modelling temporal data exist. Some of these proposals transform the temporal data into a compact representation but there is not a formal model for managing and handling uncertainty regarding temporal information. In this work we present a novel model to deal with imprecision in valid-time databases together with the definition and implementation of the data manipulation language, DML.