We introduce a new subclass of Allen's interval algebra we call "ORDHorn subclass," which is a strict superset of the "pointisable subclass." We prove that reasoning in the ORD-Horn subclass is a polynomial-time problem and show that the path-consistency method is sufficient for deciding satisfiability. Further, using an extensive machine-generated case analysis, we show that the ORD-Horn subclass is a maximal tractable subclass of the full algebra (assuming<F NaN> P6=NP). In fact, it is the unique greatest tractable subclass amongst the subclasses that contain all basic relations. This work has been supported by the German Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT) under grant ITW 8901 8 as part of the WIP project and under grant ITW 9201 as part of the TACOS project. 1 1 Introduction Temporal information is often conveyed qualitatively by specifying the relative positions of time intervals such as ". . . point to the figure while explaining the performance of the system . . . "...

Andreka and Maddux (1994, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 35(4)) classified the small relation algebras -- those with at most 8 elements, or in other terms, at most 3 atomic relations. They showed that there are eighteen isomorphism types of small relation algebras, all representable. For each simple, small relation algebra they computed the spectrum of the algebra, namely the set of cardinalities of square representations of that relation algebra.