Within certain boundaries, discussed next, the benchmark is intended to contain all queries that appear reasonable and that are consistent with the schema and data of the benchmark.
First, the benchmark is of a semantic nature—in its current form, it is not aimed at performance comparisons. The intention is to provide a foundation for comparing the descriptive and operational characteristics and capabilities of temporal data models and query languages, not their performance characteristics. Properly extended with additional relation schemas and a variety of large instances, the benchmark can also be used for performance comparisons.
Second, a number of restrictions are imposed on which types of queries are admissible in this version of the benchmark, including the following.
These advanced aspects are excluded solely for pragmatic reasons, and the exclusion is not meant to imply in any way that the aspects are not important. The restrictions simply represent an attempt to reduce the size of the initial benchmark to manageable proportions.
It is emphasized that this benchmark is merely the first in a sequence of ever-more comprehensive benchmarks. Later benchmarks will relax the above restrictions on the scope of comprehensiveness imposed on this benchmark. Specifically, the next version of the benchmark is intended to include queries that involve aggregation.