HCL Informix Timeseries Part 1 - Introduction

                                                                                                            Updated: 8/30/18

This is the first part of a multi-part series on HCL Informix TimeSeries, going into greater detail on how to setup, configure, and use the HCL Informix TimeSeries solution.

What is Time Series Data?
A time series is a set of time stamped data. There are many different types of time series data, for example, stock prices, smart meters, network performance metrics and any type of sensor data. It could contain raw data readings or aggregation of data over periods of time. HCL  Informix TimeSeries provides a method of storing and analyzing data that goes beyond the capabilities of traditional relational databases. HCL Informix TimeSeries provides storage savings and better query speeds when compared to a relational database.

​Storage Benefits of HCL Informix TimeSeries 
Although relational database management systems can store time series data for in standard relational types format by storing one row per time-stamped data entry, performance is poor and storage is inefficient. The HCL Informix TimeSeries solution saves disk space by not storing duplicate information from the columns that do not contain the time-based data.

Below is a sample of what time series data would look like in a relational database system.

That same data is now stored in HCL Informix TimeSeries. In this example, the customer number is not stored for each row of the time series. In relational storage, one would typically have to index the timestamp to gain quick access to the time series data. Due to the efficient method of storage with HCL Informix TimeSeries, the amount of space the indexes take on disk is also much smaller.

​Query Benefits of HCL Informix TimeSeries
Because of the way HCL Informix TimeSeries is stored on the disk, loading and querying the data is much quicker. Queries that aggregate data or apply an expression can be difficult to perform with SQL with much of the query logic provided by the application. HCL Informix provides built in and user defined analytics functionality on time series data.
 
What Type of Data?
The HCL Informix TimeSeries solution is a core feature of HCL Informix,  therefore it works with almost all types of data. You can use traditional data types like integers, numbers, character data types, as well as JSON/BSON data types providing the greatest flexibility of data modeling for your database.
  
What’s next?  How to setup HCL Informix TimeSeries.

Darin Tracy
Software Engineer
HCL Informix
Connect with me on LinkedIn
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Informix is a trademark of IBM Corporation in at least one jurisdiction and is used under license.