Calendar units, such as months and days, clock units, such as hours and seconds, and specialized units, such as business days and academic years, play a major role in a wide range of information system applications. System support for reasoning about these units, called granularities in this book, is important for the efficient design, use, and implementation of such applications. The book deals with several aspects of temporal information and provides a unifying model for granularities. It is intended for computer scientists and engineers who are interested in the formal models and technical development of specific issues. Practitioners can learn about critical aspects that must be taken into account when designing and implementing databases supporting temporal information. Lecturers may find this book useful for an advanced course on databases. Moreover, any graduate student working on time representation and reasoning, either in data or knowledge bases, should definitely read it.
