The Rami cation and Quali cation Problems in Temporal Databases

The rami cation and quali cation problems are two infa mous hard and ever present problems in databases and more generally in systems exhibiting a dynamic behavior The rami cation problem refers to determining the indirect e ects of actions whereas the qual i cation problem refers to determining the preconditions which must hold prior to the execution of an action A solution to these problems in database systems permits reasoning about the dynamics of databases and allows proving consistency properties These two problems become increasingly complex in temporal databases and no satisfactory solution has been proposed as of yet In this paper we describe these two prob lems in the context of temporal databases and we propose a solution of polynomial complexity based on the language of the Situation Cal culus This solution extends previous proposals for the solution of these problems in conventional non temporal databases