Several Technical Issues of Applying Temporal Databases to Medical Information Processing

Abstract

 This paper shows several technical issues of applying ATSQL 2-based temporal databases to medical information processing. First, taking ATSQL 2 as an example, we give a brief explanation about temporal databases and their query languages in a general way. Second, using a currently available temporal database mediator called TimeDB, an implementation of ATSQL 2, we exemplify simple queries, then compare the expressive power of time-dealing operators of SQL-92 and ATSQL 2. We describe the usefulness of temporal databases and argue over 1) three semantics of ATSQL 2, 2) hidden columns of temporal tables, and 3) TimeDB. Using ATSQL 2 under mixed environment with SQL-92, we concluded that ATSQL 2 has critical problems to be solved, especially in the semantics and implementation.