SQL and Historic Data - Mixing Oil and Water?

“History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”

Whether or not current market conditions lead you to endorse the above quote, history and its analysis is a vital building block within financial markets. Given the desire by regulators, risk managers and traders to store and analyse more and more historic data, it is perhaps also surprising that no standards have been established for the manipulation and analysis of historic time-ordered data. SQL and relational technology continue to dominate the database market, whilst a variety of specialist solutions deliver high performance but often require expensive knowledge of proprietary tools and techniques. Business users need ease of access and performance levels above those offered by standard relational database solutions, but technologists are extremely reluctant to head down the proprietary route. So what is the problem and what is to be done?

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