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What are data stores?

A data store is the resource that will contain your location data (.csv files) in case the number of records exceeds the record limit of a data set. You create a new data store for each large collection of .csv files with location records you have.

For example, one data store can contain .csv files with GPS records of cars. Another data store could contain people’s location during an indoor event.

You only need to create a data store when the number of records in your data exceeds the record limit of a data set.

See the data stores versus data sets article for more information on the differences between both.

How to create a new data store

Step 1: Navigate to the 'New data store' page

by first clicking on the Data stores button in the left navigation bar

screenshot of the data stores button in the navigation bar
Figure 1. The Data stores button in the navigation bar

and then on the Create new data store button in the top right corner of the Data stores page.

screenshot of the create data store button in the top right corner
Figure 2. The Create new data store button in the top right corner

Step 2: Create the data store

by specifying the Name, the Data type, the Asset or entity type and the Description.

  • The Name is used in the UI when we need to refer to that layer. This is a good location to add some more details about this data store.

  • The Data type of the data store indicates what kind of data store you want to create. This depends on the data you want to upload. The different types of data sets article explains the differences between the different types (the types are the same for data sets and data stores). Currently, there is only one choice:

    • Movement Data (Locations, time stamps, and attributes in CSV files for things or people that move)

  • You have to describe either What is moving or What your shapes represent. Examples are persons, vessels, airplanes for things that move, or devices, sensors, areas for shapes that remain in place. This name will be visible on the analytics pages.

  • The optional description is shown on the overview page with all the data stores.

  • The lifetime of your assets, when known. For example some data providers provide traffic data where the id of the asset is reset every 24 hours for privacy reasons. If you know and specify that lifetime, the platform can make certain optimizations which result in faster processing or data extraction.

screenshot of the form to create a new data store
Figure 3. The form to create a data store

Once you have filled in the form, press the Create data store button.

screenshot of the create data store button
Figure 4. The Create data store button
You can use HTML tags in the description

The description supports a subset of HTML tags. You can for example use it to

  • add links in the description using the <a> tag

  • make parts of the description stand out by typesetting them in bold (<b>) or italics (<i>)

Step 2 alternative: copy from a template

When you have data that you want to split over multiple data stores (for example one data store containing the data of January, another the data of February, …​), you can create a new data store by copying the settings and properties of an existing data store.

The new data store will have all the same settings and properties as the existing data store, but will not yet contain any data.

This allows you to immediately start uploading data to your data store, without having to define the properties first.

You can do this by activating the COPY_FROM_EXISTING tab at the top of the Create data store page.

screenshot of the copy from existing button
Figure 5. The Copy from existing tab

The page allows you to select from which data store the settings must be copied, and to customize the name and description of the new data store.

screenshot of the copy from existing form
Figure 6. The Copy from existing form

Step 3: Upload your CSV files to the data store

At this point, the data store is created, but it doesn’t contain any location data yet.

You need to upload your .csv files to the data store before you can do anything useful with it.

The UI/steps for this are identical to how you upload data to a data set: