Title: Recursive natural join operation in bitemporal nested relations

Authors: Georgia Garani

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications, Technological Educational Institute of Larisa, 41110 Larisa, Greece

Abstract: The natural join operation for bitemporal attribute timestamping nested relations of arbitrary depth is formally defined. The advantages of nesting, recursion, and attribute timestamping are combined. Different cases of the operation are distinguished, relevant to the number, the type and the nesting levels of the common attributes involved. An algorithm is presented for the generalised case. The natural join operation is proved to be a consistent extension of the natural join operation of the conventional relational model. The notion of the temporal nested key is redefined.

Keywords: temporal databases; bitemporal nested relations; natural join operation; temporal attributes; attribute timestamping; temporal elements; recursion; joinable relations; temporal nested key.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIDS.2013.056329

International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems, 2013 Vol.7 No.4, pp.356 - 372

Received: 09 Nov 2012
Accepted: 07 Mar 2013

Published online: 31 Mar 2014 *

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