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Uploading data

To start working with TIM DB and with the TIM Platform in general, the first step is to upload the data to work with. The TIM Platform is designed to work with time-series data and puts a few restrictions on the data to be uploaded. TIM also aides the user's data preparation phase by allowing many common shortcomings and offering capabilities for data preparation and data transformation.

The TIM Platform currently supports uploading data from CSV files as well as from SQL tables.

CSV file

Correctly structured time-series data in a CSV file can be uploaded to the TIM Platform to be used from any of the available interfaces.

A user can provide additional configuration options to aide TIM in recognizing the characteristics of the dataset, to set the dataset metadata, to structure the work and to configure the people who will have access to it. For an up-to-date description of the available configuration options, the REST API documentation can be consulted.

SQL table

Correctly structured time-series data in a table in an SQL database can be uploaded to the TIM Platform to be used from any of the available interfaces. Currently supported databases include PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB and SQL Server.

A user must provide certain data to identify the database and the (parts of the) table and to authenticate the connection. Additionally, the user can provide additional configuration options to aide TIM in recognizing the characteristics of the dataset, to customize what is uploaded and set the dataset metadata, to structure the work and to configure the people who will have access to it. For an up-to-date description of the available configuration options (both the required and the optional settings), the REST API documentation can be consulted.

Data preview

It can be beneficial to first preview some rows of the (potentially filtered) SQL table before actually uploading it to the TIM Platform, to ensure the connection is made correctly and any customization and filtering is applied as intended. For this purpose, TIM DB provides the functionality to retrieve a preview of an SQL table without uploading anything.

To make use of this functionality, a user must provide certain data to identify the database and the (parts of the) table and to authenticate the connection. Additionally, the user can provide additional configuration options to customize what is selected and how - and thus what will be previewed - and to set the number of observations to be included in the preview. For an up-to-date description of the available configuration options (both the required and the optional settings), the REST API documentation can be consulted.