While ago, PTC announced a new release of ThingWorx Platform (8.4). Among other exciting features, this release has OOTB support for integration with InfluxDB. At the first glance it’s “only” support for another database, but after taking a closer look, it’s tremendous move, which makes PTC’s IoT environment even more reliable and even better in terms of big data capabilities.


And considering the fact, that IoT is absolutely based on data – it’s a direction we all would like ThingWorx to go. This partnership, one of many strategic moves of PTC in the last years, is presented as “empowering developers to build next-generation IIoT, analytics and monitoring applications”.


We at Transition Technologies PSC believe, that even great leap starts with a small first step. In this case, this first release of Influx support has an opportunity to be itself a groundbreaker for all of those, who don’t believe in big data in ThingWorx. It’s a perfect step to have a background for all further areas, starting with real and historical time monitoring through data aggregation and app metrics up to data analysis or machine learning. Every IoT application craves for data and there are companies, sending daily billions of data points. A whole Internet of Things concept is based on data. Everyone talks about data ingestion, data storage, data analysis. To the present day during ThingWorx projects we had to spend time in order to analyze what data we need to retrieve, how we need to store it, which database engine to use and what mechanisms can increase the performance of the whole system. Now it’s a lot easier. At least when it comes about historical data from our sensors or external systems, we have out-of-the-box feature, which can be easily wired up.


Now your time-series data has a better place to go!


InfluxDB is a well-known open source time-series database platform, which has proven one of the best solutions for large amount of time-value data. Scalable, with available clustering and high availability mechanism, it becomes a great choice for your data, persisting in a high velocity (even up to millions writes per second). It’s a first Time Series DBMS available in ThingWorx, bringing your IoT applications to the whole new level.

 
Wsparcie ThingWorx dla InfluxDB
 

Time Series databases are those designed especially for Internet of Things to support collecting, storing and querying large volume of timestamped data. Of course, we can use other types of database types in such cases, but Time Series DBs resolve specific challenges, such as downsampling data (grouping by time), comparison with other records or joining time series.


Not to mention monitoring capabilities, high compression and retention policies, which allows to help DB administration.


InfluxDB comes in two flavours: community and enterprise edition. The first one is available in open source licensing schema, but with single node. Enterprise edition allows to have a few additional benefits (full support, clustering, incremental backup and others). You don’t even need to define and create a schema, it’s automatically generated based on the data you store!


However, it is worth remembering, that InfluxDB is not to replace standard model databases (PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server) – it is thought to cooperate with them, splitting up the model definition and the data storage. By the way – mentioned model databases are the only ones supported now to work with InfluxDB. What’s more, currently the whole mechanism supports only ThingWorx’s Value Stream and Stream storage options.


What about other storage possibilities?


Currently for ThingWorx we have couple of database options, but – excluding DataStax Enterprise Cassandra – there’s no database specialized in high volume data ingestion. Even mentioned DSE is “only” NoSQL Graph Database. Having some powerful abilities, it is still no match for InfluxDB in time series data storage.

 
Wsparcie ThingWorx dla InfluxDB
 

And what next?


Even having in mind all the limitations of the current release of ThingWorx’s InfluxDB Persistence Provider (come on, it’s a first release!), we at PSC are having great time, pushing this topic to the limits in order to provide best information to all those, who are ready to dig into this topic with us.


This is a very first step, but there are next big plans in the pipeline. Better support for query operations, supporting additional InfluxDB features or improvements in data ingestion through the ThingWorx Platform – just to name most exciting ones. It allows ThingWorx to absorb, persist and analyze a lot more data than ever before.


We are ready, and how about you?

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 5 / 5. Vote count: 1

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

If you violate the Regulations , your post will be deleted.

    _All posts in this category

    Navigating ThingWorx: Expert Solutions for IoT Challenges

    Whether you're a seasoned user or new to ThingWorx, overcoming these hurdles is crucial for IoT success. In this blog, we'll uncover the…
    Read more

    5 ways Manufacturers Can reduce energy Costs 

    Very often overlooked or accepted as-is due to being an integral part of the production – in times of crisis and cost-cutting, it…
    Read more

    5 steps to increase energy efficiency for Manufacturers

    According to the German Federal Statistical Office, energy consumption by the industry for the production of goods hardly changed between 1995 and 2019.…
    Read more

    7 ways how data visibility helps manufacturing improve efficiency

    In the manufacturing industry, efficiency is key to staying competitive and profitable. One way to improve efficiency is through data visibility. By having…
    Read more

    Energy Advisor for Manufacturing – energy savings for industry

    Energy consumption bills have been a major focus in virtually all areas of industry for many years, and the current global situation is…
    Read more

    Digital Transformation – technological trends for the successful evolution of the automotive industry

    The new opportunities associated with Industry 4.0 require companies to adapt to the new environment. In this article, we take a closer look…
    Read more

    Here's why you should use Azure Cloud for your IoT Solutions

    Digital transformation is reshaping the way how people, products, assets, data, and operations are connected to create an outcome for the customers and…
    Read more

    IoT Data Visualization

    Internet of Things systems have one huge advantage – they can collect lots of data. Temperature, items produced, amount of remaining liquids, humidity,…
    Read more

    Coronavirus & production continuity – IoT & AR for industry

    The sudden epidemic of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease has affected every sphere of the modern world. Caused by an epidemiological threat,…
    Read more

    Horizontal Scalability in ThingWorx 9

    Scalability in web applications has become crucial in the past years. An ever-growing number of devices and clients, connected to the Internet, makes…
    Read more

    High Availability in IoT applications

    Modern web applications that serve data and content to millions of users run in clustered environments. Dealing with a huge amount of connections…
    Read more

    IoT Hub Connector for ThingWorx – Connecting ThingWorx Platform with The Azure Cloud

    The ThingWorx IoT Hub Connector is the bridge that connects the ThingWorx platform to the Azure cloud (more specifically to Azure IoT Hub).…
    Read more

    What is AIoT? Artificial Intelligence of Things in Industry 4.0

    Synergy, this is how you can define this natural combination of technologies that will significantly affect the appearance of the future of production.…
    Read more

    What's new in ThingWorx 9.0?

    This year's Liveworx, due to the global situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has exceptionally been held only online. On the very first…
    Read more

    Machine Learning & ThingWorx vs COVID-19

    The evolution of artificial intelligence, as well as machine learning has gained momentum in the last few years. The constant drive to increase…
    Read more

    5G network – the key to the Industrial Internet of Things

    The Industrial Internet of Things changes our view on the classic concept of production today. The largest manufacturing companies are eager to reach…
    Read more

    How is the Internet of Things changing the aviation industry?

    The Internet of Things is being used more and more, and even global giants are already using the optimization or information gathering solutions.…
    Read more

    Rockwell Automation TechED EMEA 2019 shows that Industry 4.0 is closer than you think

    Following up our partnership with Rockwell Automation, our team of business and technical experts found their way to Munich, Germany to participate in…
    Read more

    Internet of Things and its impact on Automotive Industry

    Nobody would be surprised by a statement that the Automotive industry is innovative in its nature. Cars are machines that historically revolutionized many…
    Read more

    Internet of Things in logistics

    It might seem that the Internet of Things is dedicated only to industry. However, transport and logistics are closely connected to it, and…
    Read more

    The fourth Industrial (R)evolution

    Industry 4.0 and its foundation, the Internet of Things (IoT – especially in industrial version: IIoT), in the last years have dominated the…
    Read more

    How is ThingWorx different from Axeda and should you consider moving?

    PTC is phasing out its Axeda platform. Although they look similar at first sight, Axeda and ThingWorx differ very much in capabilities.
    Read more

    _Let’s get in touch

    Contact us