Temporal and Fuzzy Relational Databases : Application of Patient Data in Health-care Information Systems

Time is the one of the most important and complex attribute in managing databases and information systems. This book presents the importance of temporal logic in developing temporal database models and also indicates the important concepts in designing such systems. The book further investigates the representation of fuzzy data in the relational database environment and summarizes the important contributions in the field of temporal and fuzzy databases. Most of the proposed temporal database models are the extension of the classical relational model. The book further presents the key concepts for building ontological model to manage both temporal and fuzzy dimensions into database system. We have proposed a conceptual model called TempR-PDM which is an extension of the traditional entity relationship model and is extended to cover development of conceptual fuzzy-temporal relational model (FTRM). Patient data has been used to implement the model in practical form. This book addresses several aspects of temporal and fuzzy information in building database applications with emphasis on conceptual database model.