Generalized events in temporal databases

Abstract

The concepts of temporal entities and temporal events are distinguished, and the conventional crisp notion of events is extended to define generalized events. Novel definitions are provided for temporal operators used for generalized events. A temporal data model is chosen which is independent of conventional data models, but is similar to temporal data models proposed by other researchers and is sufficiently general to suitable extensions of conventional data models. It is shown how to combine different generalized events and apply temporal operators to such compound events. An outline of a possible implementation of present ideas in the relational data model is provided.<>