title: Supporting temporal queries on clinical relational databases: the S-WATCH-QL language.
abstract: Due to the ubiquitous and special nature of time, specially in clinical datábases there's the need of particular temporal data and operators. In this paper we describe S-WATCH-QL (Structured Watch Query Language), a temporal extension of SQL, the widespread query language based on the relational model. S-WATCH-QL extends the well-known SQL by the addition of: a) temporal data types that allow the storage of information with different levels of granularity; b) historical relations that can store together both instantaneous valid times and intervals; c) some temporal clauses, functions and predicates allowing to define complex temporal queries.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli Studi di Udine.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Combi
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Missora
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pinciroli
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000458:organization & administration; D015510:Clinical Medicine; D003199:Computer Systems; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D007256:Information Systems; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D011381:Programming Languages; D013997:Time Factors