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Why do we need a temporal database?

Asked 2009-04-28T23:54:40.143
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I was reading about temporal databases and it seems they have built in time aspects. I wonder why would we need such a model?

How different is it from a normal RDBMS? Can't we have a normal database i.e. RDBMS and say have a trigger which associates a time stamp with each transaction that happens? May be there would be a performance hit. But I'm still skeptical on temporal databases having a strong case in the market.

Does any of the present databases support such a feature?

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Two reasons come to mind:

  1. Some are optimized for insert and read only and can offer dramatic perf improvements
  2. Some have better understandings of time than traditional SQL - allowing for grouping operations by second, minute, hour, etc
answered 2009-04-29T01:50:02.160

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