Patent ID: 8589357

Claim:
A method performed in a database management system for enabling a temporal query on a user set of objects, the user set of objects having been designated in the database management system as a set of tracked objects, the method comprising: when a current version of an object in the user set of objects is replaced by another version of the object, including temporal metadata for the other version in an undo log which is associated with the tracked set of objects but separate therefrom; and altering the undo log as required by the replacement; and writing a historical version for the current version of the object that has been replaced in a set of historical versions using temporal metadata stored in the undo log, the set of historical versions being associated with but separate from the set of tracked objects; and wherein the temporal query takes into account the temporal metadata in the undo log, the tracked set of objects and the historical versions in the set of historical versions.