Managing Referential Integrity in Bitemporal Databases

Abstract

Bitemporal databases represent reality more accurately than conventional ones by supporting two time dimensions, valid time and transaction time. This article describes the definition of referential integrity in bitemporal databases and the way to maintain these constraints by using the programming capabilities of Database Management Systems (DBMS). First, we extend the definition of referential integrity in relational databases to cater for the two time dimensions in bitemporal databases. It is done by looking at the notion of foreign keys and how it should be applied in bitemporal databases. Our next step is to look at the possibility to maintain referential integrity by using the programming capabilities of conventional (non temporal) DBMS. The referential integrity definition for bitemporal databases are analyzed. Some triggers are identified to guarantee that the database will always be in a correct state, conforming to the referential integrity defined in the database. These ideas were implemented in a prototype bitemporal database and the experimental results show that the programming capabilities of a database can be used to maintain referential integrity in bitemporal databases