Time-Series Compression Algorithms

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  • FastPFor

    The FastPFOR C++ library: Fast integer compression

  • One notable omission from this piece is a technique to compress integer time series with both positive and negative values.

    If you naively apply bit-packing using the Simple8b algorithm, you'll find that negative integers are not compressed. This is due to how signed integers are represented in modern computers: negative integers will have their most significant bit set [1].

    Zigzag encoding is a neat transform that circumvents this issue. It works by mapping signed integers to unsigned integers so that numbers with a small absolute value can be encoded using a small number of bits. Put another way, it encodes negative numbers using the least significant bit for sign. [2]

    If you're looking for a quick way to experiment with various time series compression algorithm I highly recommend Daniel Lemire's FastPFor repository [3] (as linked in the article). I've used the Python bindings [4] to quickly evaluate various compression algorithms with great success.

    Finally I'd like to humbly mention my own tiny contribution [5], an adaptation of Lemire's C++ Simple8b implementation (including basic methods for delta & zigzag encoding/decoding).

    I used C++ templates to make the encoding and decoding routines generic over integer bit-width, which expands support up to 64 bit integers, and offers efficient usage with smaller integers (eg 16 bit). I made a couple other minor tweaks including support for arrays up to 2^64 in length, and tweaking the API/method signatures so they can be used in a more functional style. This implementation is slightly simpler to invoke via FFI, and I intend to add examples showing how to compile for usage via JS (WebAssembly), Python, and C#. I threw my code up quickly in order to share with you all, hopefully someone finds it useful. I intend to expand on usage examples/test cases/etc, and am looking forward to any comments or contributions.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representation

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_quantity#Zigza...

    [3] https://github.com/lemire/FastPFor

    [4] https://github.com/searchivarius/PyFastPFor

    [5] https://github.com/naturalplasmoid/simple8b-timeseries-compr...

  • PyFastPFor

    Python bindings for the fast integer compression library FastPFor.

  • One notable omission from this piece is a technique to compress integer time series with both positive and negative values.

    If you naively apply bit-packing using the Simple8b algorithm, you'll find that negative integers are not compressed. This is due to how signed integers are represented in modern computers: negative integers will have their most significant bit set [1].

    Zigzag encoding is a neat transform that circumvents this issue. It works by mapping signed integers to unsigned integers so that numbers with a small absolute value can be encoded using a small number of bits. Put another way, it encodes negative numbers using the least significant bit for sign. [2]

    If you're looking for a quick way to experiment with various time series compression algorithm I highly recommend Daniel Lemire's FastPFor repository [3] (as linked in the article). I've used the Python bindings [4] to quickly evaluate various compression algorithms with great success.

    Finally I'd like to humbly mention my own tiny contribution [5], an adaptation of Lemire's C++ Simple8b implementation (including basic methods for delta & zigzag encoding/decoding).

    I used C++ templates to make the encoding and decoding routines generic over integer bit-width, which expands support up to 64 bit integers, and offers efficient usage with smaller integers (eg 16 bit). I made a couple other minor tweaks including support for arrays up to 2^64 in length, and tweaking the API/method signatures so they can be used in a more functional style. This implementation is slightly simpler to invoke via FFI, and I intend to add examples showing how to compile for usage via JS (WebAssembly), Python, and C#. I threw my code up quickly in order to share with you all, hopefully someone finds it useful. I intend to expand on usage examples/test cases/etc, and am looking forward to any comments or contributions.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representation

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_quantity#Zigza...

    [3] https://github.com/lemire/FastPFor

    [4] https://github.com/searchivarius/PyFastPFor

    [5] https://github.com/naturalplasmoid/simple8b-timeseries-compr...

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

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  • One notable omission from this piece is a technique to compress integer time series with both positive and negative values.

    If you naively apply bit-packing using the Simple8b algorithm, you'll find that negative integers are not compressed. This is due to how signed integers are represented in modern computers: negative integers will have their most significant bit set [1].

    Zigzag encoding is a neat transform that circumvents this issue. It works by mapping signed integers to unsigned integers so that numbers with a small absolute value can be encoded using a small number of bits. Put another way, it encodes negative numbers using the least significant bit for sign. [2]

    If you're looking for a quick way to experiment with various time series compression algorithm I highly recommend Daniel Lemire's FastPFor repository [3] (as linked in the article). I've used the Python bindings [4] to quickly evaluate various compression algorithms with great success.

    Finally I'd like to humbly mention my own tiny contribution [5], an adaptation of Lemire's C++ Simple8b implementation (including basic methods for delta & zigzag encoding/decoding).

    I used C++ templates to make the encoding and decoding routines generic over integer bit-width, which expands support up to 64 bit integers, and offers efficient usage with smaller integers (eg 16 bit). I made a couple other minor tweaks including support for arrays up to 2^64 in length, and tweaking the API/method signatures so they can be used in a more functional style. This implementation is slightly simpler to invoke via FFI, and I intend to add examples showing how to compile for usage via JS (WebAssembly), Python, and C#. I threw my code up quickly in order to share with you all, hopefully someone finds it useful. I intend to expand on usage examples/test cases/etc, and am looking forward to any comments or contributions.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representation

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_quantity#Zigza...

    [3] https://github.com/lemire/FastPFor

    [4] https://github.com/searchivarius/PyFastPFor

    [5] https://github.com/naturalplasmoid/simple8b-timeseries-compr...

  • One notable omission from this piece is a technique to compress integer time series with both positive and negative values.

    If you naively apply bit-packing using the Simple8b algorithm, you'll find that negative integers are not compressed. This is due to how signed integers are represented in modern computers: negative integers will have their most significant bit set [1].

    Zigzag encoding is a neat transform that circumvents this issue. It works by mapping signed integers to unsigned integers so that numbers with a small absolute value can be encoded using a small number of bits. Put another way, it encodes negative numbers using the least significant bit for sign. [2]

    If you're looking for a quick way to experiment with various time series compression algorithm I highly recommend Daniel Lemire's FastPFor repository [3] (as linked in the article). I've used the Python bindings [4] to quickly evaluate various compression algorithms with great success.

    Finally I'd like to humbly mention my own tiny contribution [5], an adaptation of Lemire's C++ Simple8b implementation (including basic methods for delta & zigzag encoding/decoding).

    I used C++ templates to make the encoding and decoding routines generic over integer bit-width, which expands support up to 64 bit integers, and offers efficient usage with smaller integers (eg 16 bit). I made a couple other minor tweaks including support for arrays up to 2^64 in length, and tweaking the API/method signatures so they can be used in a more functional style. This implementation is slightly simpler to invoke via FFI, and I intend to add examples showing how to compile for usage via JS (WebAssembly), Python, and C#. I threw my code up quickly in order to share with you all, hopefully someone finds it useful. I intend to expand on usage examples/test cases/etc, and am looking forward to any comments or contributions.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representation

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-length_quantity#Zigza...

    [3] https://github.com/lemire/FastPFor

    [4] https://github.com/searchivarius/PyFastPFor

    [5] https://github.com/naturalplasmoid/simple8b-timeseries-compr...

  • corpuscompression

    Achieve better compression for small objects with a predefined corpus

  • I've always liked this kind of thing. I've also done some experiments with automatically memorizing better starting dictionaries for a corpus eras where the data is small:

    https://github.com/spullara/corpuscompression

    Another interesting case is using a compressed stream to indicate anomalies in the data when the compression ratio spikes down like in log analysis.

  • banyan

  • I have found that a very good approach is to apply some very simple transformations such as delta encoding of timestamps, and then letting a good standard compression algorithm such as zstd or deflate take care of the rest.

    Delta encoding of timestamps helps a lot though, because it makes the redundancy more visible to a general purpose compression algorithm.

    I used this for the telemetry storage of the Columbus module of the international space station, back in ~2010, and then a few times since.

    http://blog.klaehn.org/2018/06/10/efficient-telemetry-storag...

    https://github.com/Actyx/banyan

  • interpolative_coding

    A flexible and efficient C++ implementation of the Binary Interpolative Coding algorithm.

  • I didn't see binary interpolative coding (BIC) referenced. It is one of my favorites introduced to me by the book "Managing Gigabytes" by Moffett and Bell [1]. It has great compression ratio for sequences and is commonly used in inverted indexes.

    There is neat implementation [2] and technical paper [3] by Giulio Ermanno Pibiri, which I just found today by looking for it.

    [1] https://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/ammoffat/mg/

    [2] https://github.com/jermp/interpolative_coding

    [3] http://pages.di.unipi.it/pibiri/papers/BIC.pdf

  • SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

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