In search of the appropriate semantics for the inclusion of
structures and operations that will meet the needs of a wide class of
users interested in a database system supporting temporal views of their
data, the paper includes a discussion of many problems that must be
addressed. Salient features of the authorâs Historical Relational
Database Model (HRDBM) are presented, and some subtle nuances that time
brings to the development of an historical relational algebra are
illustrated. Along the way, a number of observations and guidelines are
presented that may help guide the search for an historically relationally complete database model and query languages.Information Systems Working Papers Serie