worked with the ANSI and ISO SQL standard committees to incorporate these extensions into the latest SQL:2011 standard. IBM is the first database vendor to support temporal data management based on this new SQL standard. Other database vendors use proprietary syntax for temporal operations and for the definition of temporal tables. The built-in support in DB2 for managing temporal data reduces application logic and ensures consistent handling of time-related events across all applications that run against your database, including purchased applications. Through simple declarative SQL statements, administrators can instruct DB2 to automatically maintain a history of database changes or track effective business dates, eliminating the need for such logic to be hand-coded into triggers, stored procedures, or in-house applications. This, in turn, helps companies adhere more quickly to new compliance initiatives. Furthermore, a consistent approach to managing temporal data reduces query complexity and promotes enhanced analysis of time-dependent events. An IBM internal study compared implementing a subset of business time capabilities with built-in temporal data management support in DB2 vs. hand-coding equivalent logic in two homegrown implementations. One implementation used triggers and stored procedures, while the second used triggers and JavaT application logic. All tests were done with DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows. The cost savings provided by the DB2 built-in support were striking. The built-in support in DB2 reduced coding requirements by more than 90 percent over both homegrown implementations. Implementing just the core business time logic in SQL stored procedures or in Java technology required 16 times