What is Time Series Data Management?

Time series data always has one of the axes as time. The other metrics can be anything, like stock price, diesel price, number of users that visited a museum, and so on. Time series data is queried based on time to data for a period of time.

Time series data is time-stamped data arranged as a sequence of data points indexed in the order of time—for example, daily petrol price, average monthly wages of employees, hourly Facebook logins, etc. Mathematically, time series can be represented as variable x = f(t), where f(t) is the function of time.

The four components of time series are based on different aspects of movement of time series:

• Trends: Trends show the increase and decrease over a period of time—for example, population, items in inventory, and number of schools opened.
• Seasonal variations: These are regular periodic variations observed during one year—for example, the sale of geysers and air coolers, and the number of weddings in a particular period.
• Cyclical fluctuations: These are time series variations for more than a year. Cyclic variations form a complete circle and return to the start state, with oscillations—for example, business cycles and weather cycles.
• Irregular variations: These are unforeseen variations in a regular time series—for example, the impact of floods on crop production and the sudden collapse of a warehouse.

Time series is a collection of data stored in sequence of time—for example, the daily diesel price. Time series data finds use in many domains. By analyzing past and current time series data, businesses can determine metrics, find patterns and trends, and forecast business performance for a period of time. Time series analysis is also useful in ecommerce applications, finance, IoT, and sales.

Time series data management refers to managing time series data. While relational databases have timestamp options, time series databases like MongoDB and InfluxDB provide special features to optimally handle time series data and give better performance.