The consensus glossary of temporal database concepts — February 1998 version

This document1 contains definitions of a wide range of concepts specific to and widely used within temporal databases. In addition to providing definitions, the document also includes explanations of concepts as well as discussions of the adopted names. The consensus effort that lead to this glossary was initiated in Early 1992. Earlier versions appeared in SIGMOD Record in September 1992 and March 1994. The present glossary subsumes all the previous documents. The glossary meets the need for creating a higher degree of consensus on the definition and naming of temporal database concepts. Two sets of criteria are included. First, all included concepts were required to satisfy four relevance criteria, and, second, the naming of the concepts was resolved using a set of evaluation criteria. The concepts are grouped into three categories: concepts of general database interest, of temporal database interest, and of specialized interest.