Relationships between time interval representations

Relationships between time intervals form an important part of processing in time-delimited environments. Individual states of objects must be defined positionally, emphasizing possible overlaps of time intervals so that the object is always defined correctly in time. Each object needs to be covered by just one valid state at any time (based on the assumption that the undefined states are explicitly defined by the user). Therefore, it is necessary to identify the different types of time and interval relationships. This section describes the existing taxonomy of relationships according to Tom Johnston and Randall Weis in their book Managing Time in Relational Databases: How to Design, Update and Query Temporal Data. We will point out the potential interpretations and the importance of specific types in time-oriented databases. Temporal solutions based on positional representation were defined in 1983 and became the basis of the temporal...