Chapter 2

Time and Temporal Terminology

This chapter discusses two interpretations of points in time, one treating them as instants that have no temporal extent, and the other treating them as moments that do have a temporal extent. This chapter also discusses the various terminologies used to talk about bitemporal time, in particular the terminology used by the computer science community, the terminology used in the ISO and TSQL2 standards documents, and the terminology I introduced in 2010 and have adapted for this book.

Keywords

assertion time; chronon; clock tick; duration; event; fact; inscription; instant; interval; moment; state time; time period; transaction time; valid time

The management of time in databases is a challenging topic for several ...

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