Support for Temporal Data by Complex Objects

Support for temporal data continues to be a requirement posed by many applications. We show that a complex object data model is an appmpriate means for handling temporal data. Firstly, we describe the main features of tempoml databases in terms of time sequences. valid time. etc. We then explain the mapping of time sequences onto recursively structured complex objects. Operations on temporal data ate easily transformed into complex object operations. To cope with the huge stooge requirements arising from temporal databases, we integrate the concept of storing logicaldiH erences into our approach. Here, we exploit the extensibility of the underlying complex object’s database system PRIMA. Finally, we briefly sketch a further improvement to guarantee fast access to the present data by storing them apart from the historical data without loosing the connection betboth.