MarkLogic Server 11.0 Product Documentation

Temporal Developer's Guide — Chapter 4

Temporal Search Query Constructors

The following table summarizes the available functions used to construct cts:query expressions for searching temporal documents. For general details on constructing cts:query expressions, see Composing cts:query Expressions in the Search Developer's Guide.

Period Comparison Operators

This section describes the Allen and ISO SQL algebra operators that can be used in search queries. Temporal queries are basically some interval operations on time period such as, period equalities, containment and overlaps. MarkLogic Server supports both Allen and SQL operators when comparing time periods. Allen's interval algebra provides the most comprehensive set of these operations. SQL 2011 also provides similar operators. However all the SQL operators can be expressed using Allen's Algebra.

cts:period-range-query(X, operator, Y)

cts:period-compare-query(X, operator, Y)

cts:period-compare(X, operator, Y)

Comparing Two Periods

The range query on periods can be used only when there are range indexes for them on the database. However you may need to query based either on some external period values or those from a document. The following example shows how you can use the cts:period-compare function to determine whether two period values satisfy the conditions imposed by the comparison operator, ALN_MEETS. If the ALN_MEETS conditions are satisfied, then true is returned; otherwise false is returned.

JavaScript Example:

var period1 = cts.period(xs.dateTime("2000-05-31T09:30:10"),
                         xs.dateTime("2003-05-31T12:30:00"));
var period2 = cts.period(xs.dateTime("2003-05-31T12:30:00"), 
                         xs.dateTime("2004-05-31T14:30:00"));
cts.periodCompare(period1, "ALN_MEETS", period2);

XQuery Example:

xquery version "1.0-ml";
let $period1 := cts:period(xs:dateTime("2000-05-31T09:30:10"),
                           xs:dateTime("2003-05-31T12:30:00"))
let $period2 := cts:period(xs:dateTime("2003-05-31T12:30:00"), 
                           xs:dateTime("2004-05-31T14:30:00"))
return cts:period-compare($period1,"ALN_MEETS",$period2)

Example Search Queries

This section describes some sample search queries. The searches described in this section are done on the documents described in Example: The Lifecycle of a Temporal Document.

The following query searches for the temporal documents that have a valid end time before 14:00:

JavaScript Example:

cts.search(cts.periodRangeQuery(
    "valid",
    "ALN_BEFORE",
    cts.period(xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T14:00:00"),
               xs.dateTime("9999-12-31T11:59:59Z")) ))

XQuery Example:

cts:search(fn:doc(), cts:period-range-query(
   "valid",
   "ALN_BEFORE",
   cts:period(xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T14:00:00"),
              xs:dateTime("9999-12-31T11:59:59Z")) ))

This query returns Splits 1, 2 and 3 of the document.

The following query searches the temporal documents, using the cts:and-query to AND two cts:period-range-query functions, to locate the documents that represented the order at 11:30 when queried at 11:51.

JavaScript Example:

cts.search(cts.andQuery(
      [cts.periodRangeQuery(
          "system", 
          "ISO_CONTAINS",
          cts.period(xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T11:51:00"),
                     xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T11:51:01"))),
      cts.periodRangeQuery(
          "valid", 
          "ISO_CONTAINS", 
          cts.period(xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T11:30:00"),
                     xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T11:30:01")))]))

XQuery Example:

xquery version "1.0-ml";
cts:search(fn:doc(), cts:and-query((
   cts:period-range-query(
      "system",
      "ISO_CONTAINS",
      cts:period(xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T11:51:00"),
                 xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T11:51:01"))), 
   cts:period-range-query(
      "valid",
      "ISO_CONTAINS",
      cts:period(xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T11:30:00"),
                 xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T11:30:01"))))))

This query returns Version 2 of the document.

The following query searches for the temporal documents that have a valid end time of 12:10:

JavaScript Example:

var period = cts.period(xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T12:10:00"),
                        xs.dateTime("2014-04-03T13:10:00"));
cts.search(cts.periodRangeQuery("valid", "ALN_MEETS", period))

XQuery Example:

xquery version "1.0-ml";
let $period := cts:period(xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T12:10:00"),
                          xs:dateTime("2014-04-03T13:10:00"))
return cts:search(fn:doc(), cts:period-range-query(
     "valid", "ALN_MEETS", $period))

This query returns Split 2 of the document.