Process Historian

A process historian is a database optimised for storing large volumes of time-series data from industrial sensors and control systems. It is the system of record for plant data and the foundation most analytics, AI and digital-twin tools build on.

Historians (such as AVEVA/OSIsoft PI) capture and compress millions of tag values over years, making them retrievable for trending, analysis and reporting. Because they hold the operational history of a plant, they are the usual data source for advanced analytics, predictive maintenance and digital twins — which is why historian integration is a recurring theme in industrial AI projects.

Related terms

Related guides

Software