By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    grief
    Coping With Depression from Loss After a Preventable Accident
    November 14, 2024
    medical research
    The Key to Medical Progress in Clinical Trials
    March 13, 2025
    HIPPA compliance
    How Medical Office Staff Can Make Your Practice HIPAA Compliant
    October 29, 2021
    Latest News
    7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
    August 20, 2025
    Hospital Pest Control and the Fight Against Superbugs
    August 20, 2025
    Hygiene Beyond The Clinic: Attention To Overlooked Non-Clinical Spaces
    August 13, 2025
    5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
    August 3, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    Encouraging Medicare News From Senate Republicans
    March 17, 2012
    chronic disease
    Lifestyles Cause Most Serious Disease and Deaths
    May 25, 2013
    Encounter With an ‘Unexeptional’ Healthcare System
    April 11, 2012
    Latest News
    How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
    August 22, 2025
    How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
    August 22, 2025
    How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
    August 22, 2025
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Consider MySQL ‘Archive’ Storage Engine to Store Large Amounts of Med Device Structured or Waveform Data
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > eHealth > Consider MySQL ‘Archive’ Storage Engine to Store Large Amounts of Med Device Structured or Waveform Data
eHealth

Consider MySQL ‘Archive’ Storage Engine to Store Large Amounts of Med Device Structured or Waveform Data

ShahidShah
ShahidShah
Share
4 Min Read
SHARE

I’ve been working on med device integrations for the many years now and one of the most common questions that arises when doing those integrations is “what’s the best way to save sensor waveform and analog to digital values?” Given the complexity of medical devices, there’s no single or simple answer but one approach that’s worked well for me in the past is to assume that whatever the data is, when it comes into digital format, it’s likely structured in some manner. If so, putting it into a database probably makes more sense in many cases than just dropping it into flat files (which is a common and very reasonable approach). If you want to store your data easily and without much hassle, give (free) open source MySQL a shot. Most of us who have been in the medical device world for even a little while tend to think that SQL is too heavyweight, but MySQL supports various storage engines that have different behaviors and storage goals. For instance, the standard InnoDB storage engine is an ACID compliant engine that allows full CRUD operations and is actually good when data integrity is crucial. Another storage engine is the ‘Archive’ engine — this is very useful when you want to just insert compressed, structured, data into the database and you want to pull data out at some point through a SQL SELECT clause. Archive engines do not have the ability to update or delete data but that’s OK for most of our med device data storage needs where we want continuously store and monitor data coming in through the system but won’t be modifying it. To learn more about MySQL’s Archive engine, check out the documentation on the MySQL site. Here is some relevant detail from that page that might save you some reading time:

Storage: Rows are compressed as they are inserted. The ARCHIVE engine uses zlib lossless data compression (see http://www.zlib.net/). There are several types of insertions that are used: An INSERT statement just pushes rows into a compression buffer, and that buffer flushes as necessary. The insertion into the buffer is protected by a lock. A SELECT forces a flush to occur, unless the only insertions that have come in were INSERT DELAYED (those flush as necessary). A bulk insert is visible only after it completes, unless other inserts occur at the same time, in which case it can be seen partially. A SELECT never causes a flush of a bulk insert unless a normal insert occurs while it is loading.
Retrieval: On retrieval, rows are uncompressed on demand; there is no row cache. A SELECT operation performs a complete table scan: When a SELECT occurs, it finds out how many rows are currently available and reads that number of rows. SELECT is performed as a consistent read. Note that lots of SELECT statements during insertion can deteriorate the compression, unless only bulk or delayed inserts are used. To achieve better compression, you can use OPTIMIZE TABLE or REPAIR TABLE. The number of rows in ARCHIVE tables reported by SHOW TABLE STATUS is always accurate.

TAGGED:HIT
Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

engineer fitting prosthetic arm
How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
Health care
August 20, 2025
a woman explaining the document
How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
Public Health
August 20, 2025
physiotherapist at work
How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
Health care
August 20, 2025
Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs
7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
Health News
August 20, 2025

You Might also Like

Health careHospital AdministrationMedical Records

Why It’s Key To Take Care Of Medical Debt To Avoid Health Issues Later 

April 30, 2019

Having a Social Media Crisis? Here’s What to Do

May 8, 2014

Physician Ratings: One Orthopedic Doctor’s Experience

August 14, 2012
Image
BusinessSocial Media

The Still-Early State of Online Doctor Reviews

April 2, 2013
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?