A comparison of the temporal expressiveness of three database query methods

Time is a multifaceted phenomenon that developers of clinical decision-support systems can model at various levels of complexity. An unresolved issue for the design of clinical databases is whether the underlying data model should support interval semantics. In this paper, we examine whether interval-based operations are required for querying protocol-based conditions. We report on an analysis of a set of 256 eligibility criteria that the T-HELPER system uses to screen patients for enrollment in eight clinical-trial protocols for HIV disease. We consider three data-manipulation methods for temporal querying: the consensus query representation Arden Syntax, the commercial standard query language SQL, and the temporal query language TimeLineSQL (TLSQL). We compare the ability of these three query methods to express the eligibility criteria. Seventy nine percent of the 256 criteria require operations on time stamps. These temporal conditions comprise four distinct patterns, two of which use interval-based data. Our analysis indicates that the Arden Syntax can query the two non-interval patterns, which represent 54% of the temporal conditions. Timepoint comparisons formulated in SQL can instantiate the two non-interval patterns and one interval pattern, which encompass 96% of the temporal conditions. TLSQL, which supports an interval-based model of time, can express all four types of temporal patterns. Our results demonstrate that the T-HELPER system requires simple temporal operations for most protocol-based queries. Of the three approaches tested, TLSQL is the only query method that is sufficiently expressive for the temporal conditions in this system.