What are Time Series Database Use Cases?

What are Time Series Database Use Cases?

What do self-driving cars, smart homes, autonomous stock/crypto trading algorithms, or energy sensor systems have in common? These applications are all based on a form of data that measures how things change over time. It’s called time-series data and it plays a very important role in our lives today.

Accordingly, time-series databases also became a hot topic.

time series database use cases

What is a time-series database?

A time-series database (TSDB) can be defined simply as a database optimized for storing and using time-stamped or time-series data. You don’t need to use a TSDB to work with time-series data. Any relational or NoSQL database or a key-value-store will do, e.g. MongoDB or redis. However, when dealing with time-series data (e.g. temperature, air pressure or car velocity data), a TSDB makes your life as a developer a hell of a lot easier.

Indeed, the two main reasons why TSDBs is the fastest-growing category of databases, are usability and scalability. A purpose-built time-series database typically includes common functions of time-series data analysis, which is convenient when working with time-series data. Because time-series data typically continually produces new data entries, data grows pretty quickly, and with high-frequency data or many time-series data sources, data ingestion quickly becomes a challenge. Time-series databases are optimized to scale well for time-series data with time being a common denominator and outperform any other database without specific time-series optimizations. This is why more and more people are adopting time-series databases and using them for a variety of use cases.

What are time-series database use cases?

Monitoring Use Case time series

Monitoring sensor data 

One of the use cases is the monitoring of sensor data for safety measurements, predictive maintenance, or assistance functions. E.g. a car stores and uses all kinds of sensor data like tyre pressure, surrounding temperature and humidity for driver assistance and maintenance support. An aircraft monitors gravity and aerodynamic principles to reassure pilots that everything is alright – or to alert them that something has gone wrong. In fact, a Boeing creates on average half a terabyte of data per flight, most of which is time-series data.  [1]

Logistics Use Case time series database

Tracking assets

Tracking assets is ideal for a time-series database as you constantly want to monitor where assets are, e.g. the cars of a fleet or any goods you might be stocking or shipping. These applications typically include unique vehicle or asset IDs, GPS coordinates, and additional metadata per timestamp. Apart from keeping track of the assets in realtime, you also can use the data for logistics and optimize e.g. your stocking and delivery processes.

edge time series ecommerce

Analyzing and predicting shopping behavior

Or, many e-commerce systems store all information of an item from product inventory, logistics data and any available environmental data to transaction amount, all items of the shopping cart purchased, to payment data, order information etc. In this case, a TSDB will be used to collect these large amounts of data and analyze them quickly to determine e.g. what to recommend to customers to buy next or optimize the inventory or predict future shopping behavior.

What are the most popular time series databases?

Well, here is our list of popular / established time series databases to use in 2020 to get you started:

  • InfluxDB: an open-source time series database, written in Go and optimized for high-availability storage and retrieval of time series data for operations monitoring, application metrics, IoT sensor data, and real-time analytics
  • KairosDB: a fast distributed scalable time series database written on top of Cassandra. 
  • Kdb+:  is a column-based relational time series database with a focus on applications in the financial sector.
  • Objectbox TS: superfast object persistence with time-series data on the edge. Collect, store, and query time-series data on the edge and sync selective data to / from a central location on-premise or in the cloud as needed.
  • TimescaleDB: an open-source database designed to make SQL scalable for time-series data. It is engineered up from PostgreSQL and packaged as a PostgreSQL extension with full SQL support.

For an overview of time-series databases currently available for productive use, see DB Engines. The database of databases is also a good resource if you are deeply interested in the database landscape; it is more extensive, but it includes any DB available independent of the level of support or if it is still maintained, also hobby projects. 

Time Series Database Use Cases

What do you do when you have more than just time-series data?

Typically, a time-series database is not well suited to model non-time-based data. Therefore, many companies choose to implement two databases. This increases overhead, disk space, and is especially impractical when you deal with edge devices. 

Time Series + Object-Oriented Data Persistence

Storing and processing both time series data and objects, developers can collect complex datasets and combine them with time-series data. Combining these data types gives a more complete understanding and context to the data – not just what happens over time, but also other factors that affect the results. 

The best option is a robust object-oriented database solution that lets you model your data as it reflects the factual use case / the real world in objects and on-top is optimized for time series data. You can model your world in objects and combine this with the power of time-series data to identify patterns in your data. If this is indeed a database optimized for restricted devices and Edge Computing, you can even use this data in real-time and on the device. By combining time series data with more complex data types, an object time-series edge database can empower new use cases on the edge based on a fast and easy all-in-one data persistence solution. 

Still have questions? Feel free to contact us here!

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[1] Time Series Management Systems: A Survey Søren Kejser Jensen, Torben Bach Pedersen, Senior Member, IEEE, Christian Thomsen

Time Series & Objects: Using Data on the Edge

Time Series & Objects: Using Data on the Edge

Many IoT projects collect, both time series data and other types of data. Typically, this means they will run two databases: A time-series database and a traditional database or key/value store. This creates fracture and overhead, which is why ObjectBox TS brings together the best of both worlds in one database (DB). ObjectBox TS is a hybrid database: an extremely fast object-oriented DB plus a time-series extension, specially optimized for time series data. In combination with its tiny footprint, ObjectBox is a perfect match for IoT applications running on the edge. The out-of-the-box synchronization takes care of synchronizing selected data sets super efficiently and it works offline and online, on-premise, in the cloud.

time-series-data-example-temperature

What is time series data?

There are a lot of different types of data that are used in IoT applications. Time-series is one of the most common data types in analytics, high-frequency inspections, and maintenance applications for IIoT / Industry 4.0 and smart mobility. Time series tracks data points over time, most often taken at equally spaced intervals. Typical data sources are sensor data, events, clicks, temperature – anything that changes over time.

Why use time series data on the edge?

Time-series data sets are usually collected from a lot of sensors, which sample at a high rate – which means that a lot of data is being collected.

For example, if a Raspberry Pi gateway collects 20 data points/second, typically that would mean 1200 entries a minute measuring e.g. 32 degrees. As temperatures rarely change significantly in short time frames, does all of this data need to go to the cloud? Unless you need to know the exact temperature in a central location every millisecond, the answer is no. Sending all data to the cloud is a waste of resources, causing high cloud costs without providing immediate, real-time insights.

time-series-objects-edge

The Best of Both Worlds: time series + object oriented data persistence

With ObjectBox you aren’t limited to only using time series data. ObjectBox TS is optimized for time series data, but ObjectBox is a robust object oriented database solution that can store any data type. With ObjectBox, model your world in objects and combine this with the power of time-series data to identify patterns in your data, on the device, in real time. By combining time series data with more complex data types, ObjectBox empowers new use cases on the edge based on a fast and easy all-in-one data persistence solution. 

Bring together different data streams for a fusion of data; mix and match sensor data with the ObjectBox time series dashboard and find patterns in your data. On top, ObjectBox takes care of synchronizing selected data between devices (cloud / on-premise) efficiently for you.

time-series-data-visualization-dashboard

Get a complete picture of your data in one place

Use Case: Automotive (Process Optimization)

Most manufacturers, whether they’re producing cars, the food industry, or utilities, have already been optimizing production for a long period of time. However, there are still many cases and reasons why costly manual processes prevail.  One such example is automotive varnish. In some cases, while the inspection is automatic and intelligent, a lot of cars need to be touched up by hand, because the factors leading to the errors in the paint are not yet discovered. While there is a lot of internal expert know-how available from the factory workers, their gut feel is typically not enough to adapt production processes.

How can this be improved using time series and object data? 

The cars (objects) are typically already persisted including all the mass customization and model information. If now, all data, including sensor data, of the manufacturing site like temperature, humidity, spray speed (all time-series data) is persisted and added to each car object, any kind of correlations between production site variables, individual car properties and varnish quality can be detected. Over time, patterns will emerge. The gut feel of the factory workers would provide a great starting point for analyzing the data to discover Quick Wins before longterm patterns can be detected. Over time, AI and automatic learning kicks in to optimize the factory setup best possible to reduce the need for paint touch ups as much as possible. 

Use Case: Smart Grids

Utility grid loads shift continually throughout the day, effecting grid efficiency, pricing, and energy delivery. Using Smart Grids, utilities companies can increase efficiency and reliability in real time. In order to get insights from Smart Grids, companies need to collect a large volume of data from existing systems. A huge portion of this data is time series, e.g. usage and load statistics. On top, they incorporate other forms of data, e.g. asset relationship data, weather conditions, and customer profiles. Using visualization and analytical tools, these data types can be brought together to generate business insights and actionable operative goals.

ObjectBox TS: time series with objects

Storing and processing both time series data and objects on the edge, developers can gather complex data sets and get real time insight, even when offline. Combining these data types gives a fuller understanding and context for data – not only what happens over time, but what other factors could be influencing results. Using a fast hybrid edge database allows developers to save resources, while maintaining speed and efficiency. By synchronizing useful data to the cloud, real time data can be used for both immediate action, and post-event analysis.

Get in touch with our team to get a virtual demo of ObjectBox TS, or check out the sample GitHub repo to see more about the code.