Working with system-period temporal tables

Defining a system-period temporal table allows you to maintain historical versions of the table's rows. A system-period temporal table stores current versions of your data and uses its associated history table to store prior versions of rows that were updated or deleted.

A system-period temporal table is an SQL table that can be created by using the CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE SQL statements. The management of history for the table works for both SQL Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements and also for native DB I/O operations. The database manager uses the SYSTEM_TIME period to preserve historical versions of each row that is affected by an update or delete operation. The database manager stores the historical versions of the rows in a history table that is associated with the system-period temporal table. An alter table to add versioning establishes the link between the system-period temporal table and its history table. By referencing only a system-period temporal table, your queries have access to your data at the current point in time and from past points in time.