Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 8. What's Next?
The shape of the data landscape has changed, and it's about to undergo an even bigger up-
heaval. New technologies have made it reasonable and cost effective to collect and analyze
much
larger amounts of data, including time series data. That change, in turn, has enticed
people to greatly expand where, how, and how much data they want to collect. It isn't just
about having data at a much larger scale to do the things we used to do at higher frequency,
such as tracking stock trades in fractions of seconds or measuring residential energy usage
every few minutes instead of once a month. The combination of greatly increasing scale plus
emerging technologies to collect and analyze data for valuable insights is creating the desire
and ability to do
new
things.
This ability to try something new raises the question: what's next? Before we take a look for-
ward, let's review the key ideas we have covered so far.
A New Frontier: TSDBs, Internet of Things, and More
The way we watch the world is new. Machine sensors “talk to” servers and machines talk to
each other. Analysts collect data from social media for sentiment analysis to find trends and
see if they correlate to the behavior of stock trading. Robots wander across the surface of the
oceans, taking repeated measurements of a variety of parameters as they go. Manufacturers
not only monitor manufacturing processes for fine-tuning of quality control, they also pro-
duce “smart parts” as components of high-tech equipment to report back on their function
from the field. The already widespread use of sensor data is about to vastly expand as creat-
ive companies find new ways to deploy sensors, such as embedding them into fabric to make
“smart clothes” to monitor parameters including heart function. There are also many wear-
able devices for reporting on a person's health and activity. One of the most widespread
sources of machine data already in action is from system logs in data center monitoring. As
techniques such as those described in this report become widely known, more and more
people are choosing to collect data as time series. Going forward, where will you find time
series data? The answer is: essentially everywhere.
