Time Series Databases: New Ways to Store and Access Data

Chapter 1. Time Series Data: Why Collect It?

“Collect your data as if your life depends on it!”

This bold admonition may seem like a quote from an overzealous project manager who holds extreme views on work ethic, but in fact, sometimes your life does depend on how you collect your data. Time series data provides many such serious examples. But let’s begin with something less life threatening, such as: where would you like to spend your vacation?

Suppose you’ve been living in Seattle, Washington for two years. You’ve enjoyed a lovely summer, but as the season moves into October, you are not looking forward to what you expect will once again be a gray, chilly, and wet winter. As a break, you decide to treat yourself to a short holiday in December to go someplace warm and sunny. Now begins the search for a good destination.

You want sunshine on your holiday, so you start by seeking out reports for rainfall in potential vacation places. Reasoning that an average of many measurements will provide a more accurate report than just checking what is happening at the moment, you compare the yearly rainfall average for the Caribbean country of Costa Rica (about 77 inches or 196 cm) with that of the South American coastal city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (46 inches or 117cm). Seeing that Costa Rica gets almost twice as much rain per year on average than Rio de Janeiro, you choose the Brazilian city for your December trip and end up slightly disappointed when it rains all four days of your holiday. ...