Informatics and Temporality:

Time and temporal relations are crucial aspects of information processing in two ways. The synchronization of activity within any information processing system poses complex problems for coordinating the local time of an event within a circuit and a global clock time for a system. This aspect is not relevant to our project in its current phase, though clearly such concerns are germane to the larger issues of information design that undergird our research. The second aspect addresses the history of data and the history represented by data within an information processing environment. This aspect is directly relevant to our project and a glossary of terms has been excerpted to serve as a standard vocabulary within our research project and for the seminar.

EXCERPT: C.S.Jensen at al., "Glossary for Temporal Database Concepts"

Valid Time (moment at which the fact is true within the modelled reality)
Transaction Time (moment at which the fact is stored in the database)
Query Time (moment at which a database is queried)
User-defined Time (birthday, hiring date)
Snapshot
- Valid Time Relation
- Transaction Time Relation
- Snapshot Relation
- Bitemporal relation
- Transaction time slice operator
Temporal Element
Chronon: smallest unit in any time system
Time stamp
Event
Lifespan
Temporal homogeneity
Interval
Span - directed duration
- Temporal expression - syntactic expression used in a query

Readings:

C.S. Jensen et.al., "Glossary of Temporal Database Concepts"
Qing Zhou and Richard Fikes, "A Reusable Time Ontology"
Fabio Schreiber, "Is Time a Real Time?"