This book grew out of a Dagstuhl seminar organized by the volume editors in June 1997. After the seminar, submissions for this book were solicited both from and beyond the group of participants. A peer review process followed, from which only original papers of the highest quality on the state of the art in the field were accepted for presentation in the book. The volume is divided into parts on temporal database infrastructure, temporal query languages, and advanced applications. A comprehensive bibliography, glossaries for both temporal database and time granularity concepts, and summaries of current work are also provided. The book is the ultimate reference for anyone actively involved in temporal database research and design or who is interested in their applications.