A uniform algebraic characterization of temporal functional dependencies

In the database literature, different types of temporal functional dependencies (TFDs) have been proposed to constrain the temporal evolution of information. Unfortunately, the lack of a common notation makes it difficult to compare, to integrate, and to possibly extend the various proposals. In this paper, we outline a unifying algebraic framework for TFDs. We first introduce the proposed approach, then we use it to give a uniform account of existing TFDs, and finally we show that it allows one to easily express new meaningful TFDs.