[jboss-jira] [JBoss JIRA] Updated: (JBRULES-1374) Implement the new time relation operators

Implement the new time relation operators ----------------------------------------- Key: JBRULES-1374 URL: http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBRULES-1374 Project: JBoss Drools Issue Type: Sub-task Security Level: Public(Everyone can see) Components: Reteoo, Drl Parser/Builder, xml Reporter: Edson Tirelli Assigned To: Edson Tirelli Fix For: 4.1.0 All this goes back to Allen's interval-based semantics defined in 1983 in his paper "Maintaining Knowledge about temporal relationships". In it the 13 relationships are defined. In fact, we have the "equals" relation, plus 6 further relationships and their inverses (e.g., "before" is the inverse relationship of "after"). I wrote down how to formally interpret the visual representation for all 13 relationships given by Allen on page 4 (see the box at the upper right corner; the pictoral example illustrates best the situation) of the paper, i.e. I expressed them in the format you suggested using the start and end time of the events. Here we go (of course, for all events E must hold: E.startTS <= E.endTS). A equals B: (A.startTS == B.startTS) && (A.endTS == B.endTS) A before B: (A.endTS < B.startTS) A after B: (A.startTS > B.endTS) A meets B: (A.endTS == B.startTS) A met-by B: (A.startTS == B.endTS) A overlaps B: (A.startTS < B.startTS) && (A.endTS < B.endTS) A overlapped-by B: (A.startTS > B.startTS) && (A.endTS > B.endTS) A during B: (A.startTS > B.startTS) && (A.endTS < B.endTS) A contains B: (A.startTS < B.startTS) && (A.endTS > B.endTS) A starts B: (A.startTS == B.startTS) && (A.endTS < B.endTS) A started-by B: (A.startTS == B.startTS) && (A.endTS > B.endTS) A finishes B: (A.startTS > B.startTS) && (A.endTS == B.endTS) A finished-by B: (A.startTS < B.startTS) && (A.endTS == B.endTS)