Temporal relational algebras supporting preferences in temporal relational databases: Definition, properties and evaluation

IF 3.4 2区计算机科学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Information Systems Pub Date : 2025-07-17 DOI:10.1016/j.is.2025.102583

Luca Anselma , Antonella Coviello , Davide Cerotti , Erica Raina , Paolo Terenziani

{"title":"Temporal relational algebras supporting preferences in temporal relational databases: Definition, properties and evaluation","authors":"Luca Anselma , Antonella Coviello , Davide Cerotti , Erica Raina , Paolo Terenziani","doi":"10.1016/j.is.2025.102583","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite numerous approaches address the treatment of time within relational contexts, temporal preferences remain unexplored. Many tasks and applications, such as planning, scheduling, workflows, and guidelines, involve scenarios where the exact timing of events is not known — referred to as <em>indeterminate time</em>. In such cases, preferences can be assigned to different possible temporal outcomes. In a recent study, we established the theoretical foundation for handling preferential indeterminate time in temporal relational databases. This includes proposing a temporal relational representation and a corresponding temporal relational algebra, along with an analysis of their theoretical properties, such as correctness and reducibility.</div><div>The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we extend the above theoretical framework to deal with a more expressive representation of temporal preferences. Second, we assess both theoretical frameworks in terms of performance evaluation along different dimensions, and study the overhead added to cope with preferences with respect to relational approaches without time, with exact time, and with indeterminate time but no preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50363,"journal":{"name":"Information Systems","volume":"135 ","pages":"Article 102583"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information Systems","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306437925000675","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Despite numerous approaches address the treatment of time within relational contexts, temporal preferences remain unexplored. Many tasks and applications, such as planning, scheduling, workflows, and guidelines, involve scenarios where the exact timing of events is not known — referred to as indeterminate time. In such cases, preferences can be assigned to different possible temporal outcomes. In a recent study, we established the theoretical foundation for handling preferential indeterminate time in temporal relational databases. This includes proposing a temporal relational representation and a corresponding temporal relational algebra, along with an analysis of their theoretical properties, such as correctness and reducibility.

The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we extend the above theoretical framework to deal with a more expressive representation of temporal preferences. Second, we assess both theoretical frameworks in terms of performance evaluation along different dimensions, and study the overhead added to cope with preferences with respect to relational approaches without time, with exact time, and with indeterminate time but no preferences.

查看原文本刊更多论文

支持时态关系数据库中首选项的时态关系代数：定义、属性和评估

尽管有许多方法在关系背景下处理时间，但时间偏好仍然未被探索。许多任务和应用程序，如计划、调度、工作流和指导方针，都涉及不知道事件的确切时间的场景——称为不确定时间。在这种情况下，偏好可以分配给不同的可能的时间结果。在最近的一项研究中，我们建立了处理时态关系数据库中优先不确定时间的理论基础。这包括提出一个时间关系表示和相应的时间关系代数，以及对它们的理论性质的分析，如正确性和可约性。本文的贡献是双重的。首先，我们扩展了上述理论框架，以处理时间偏好的更具表现力的表示。其次，我们从不同维度的性能评估方面评估了这两个理论框架，并研究了在没有时间、精确时间和不确定时间但没有偏好的关系方法中处理偏好所增加的开销。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Information Systems 工程技术-计算机：信息系统

CiteScore

9.40

自引率

2.70%

发文量

112

审稿时长

53 days

期刊介绍： Information systems are the software and hardware systems that support data-intensive applications. The journal Information Systems publishes articles concerning the design and implementation of languages, data models, process models, algorithms, software and hardware for information systems. Subject areas include data management issues as presented in the principal international database conferences (e.g., ACM SIGMOD/PODS, VLDB, ICDE and ICDT/EDBT) as well as data-related issues from the fields of data mining/machine learning, information retrieval coordinated with structured data, internet and cloud data management, business process management, web semantics, visual and audio information systems, scientific computing, and data science. Implementation papers having to do with massively parallel data management, fault tolerance in practice, and special purpose hardware for data-intensive systems are also welcome. Manuscripts from application domains, such as urban informatics, social and natural science, and Internet of Things, are also welcome. All papers should highlight innovative solutions to data management problems such as new data models, performance enhancements, and show how those innovations contribute to the goals of the application.