Using XML to Build Efficient Transaction-Time Temporal Database Systems on Relational Databases

In this paper, we present the ArchIS system that achieves full-functionality transaction-time databases without requiring temporal extensions in XML or database standards. ArchIS’ architecture uses (a) XML to support temporally grouped (virtual) representations of the database history, (b) XQuery to express powerful temporal queries on such views, (c) temporal clustering and indexing techniques for managing the actual historical data in a relational database, and (d) SQL/XML for executing the queries on the XML views as equivalent queries on the relational database. The performance studies presented in the paper show that ArchIS is quite effective at storing and retrieving under complex query conditions the transaction-time history of relational databases.