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.