Time Comparisons

Whenever you have time series data, a natural question is “how does this compare” with a previous period, or the same period a previous year. 

Zing Data now supports time comparisons versus previous periods, allowing you to easily visualize values relative to previous time periods in just one tap.

Adding a comparison

To add a time comparison to your chart or data table, simply:

1. Add a filter with a date/time field​​​​​​​
2. Select the range you’d like to filter on:
   • After a date
   • Between two dates
   • Relative past dates (e.g. past 12 months, or previous 24 hours)
   • Relative future dates (e.g. next 24 hours, next two quarters)
   • Relative past to future dates (past 7 days to next 7 days)
3. Click ‘compare’ and specify either:
   • The previous period (For example, if you had March 15, 2023 - March 25th, 2023 the previous period comparison would be the *same duration (*10 days) ending on the start date of the period specified, in this case March 5 - March 15, 2023)
   • The year ago period (For example, if you had March 15, 2023 - March 25th, 2023 the previous period comparison would be the same days and month, but the previous year, in this case March 15, 2022 - March 25, 2022)

Relative dates into the future dates can be useful for looking at forecasts and having a ‘rolling’ period which always shows data relative to the time the question is run.

A comprehensive solution for time series data

This new time comparisons capability makes it possible to easily see trends versus historical (previous period or previous year) data.

Often you’ll also want to know when new and relevant data differs from historical levels – such as spike or dips that requires your attention. Zing’s alerting feature makes it possible to get up proactive push notification or email alerts when new data goes above a threshold you set, drops below a threshold you set, changes by some amount, or changes by some percentage.

Once you’re alerted about an important change, you can simply tap on a chart’s line, bar, or the row of a table to drill down into that specific data point, and apply additional cuts of by other fields to inform you about the likely causes of the change.

This works for any date or date/time field, across all data sources - Postgres, mySQL, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, CSV, Excel, Google Sheets, Clickhouse, Redshift, MariaDB, and SQL Server.

Next steps

This time comparisons capability is live for all users of Zing, and we’re adding time comparisons into our Natural Language Querying capabilities as well.