Time Granularities in Databases, Data Mining, and Temporal Reasoning

Book excerpt: Calendar and time units and specialized units, such as business days and academic years, play a major role in a wide range of information system applications. System support for reasoning about these units, called granularities, is important for the efficient design, use, and implementation of such applications. This book deals with several aspects of temporal information and provides a unifying model for granularities. Practitioners can learn about critical aspects that must be taken into account when designing and implementing databases supporting temporal information.