This section describes tasks related to creating temporal tables.
Temporal tables are distinguished from nontemporal tables by having temporal columns: a valid-time column, a transaction-time column, or both. A temporal column can be derived from two individual DateTime columns representing the beginning and end of a duration, or it can be a true Period data type column that represents the duration as a single Teradata Database data type. Teradata recommends using derived temporal columns, because Teradata Database cannot collect statistics on temporal data in Period data type columns.