Quote Originally Posted by SteveB View Post
If your data is aquired and logged at consistant intervals (say every 20 sec) you can log the data as a group. Start by saving a time/date. Then every 10 (or whatever interval is approariate) events, save another time/date. Since you know the interval of the datapoints, and have the time stamps, the rest can be determined later in whatever application does the post processing of the information. You can reduce a lot of overhead this way.

If the events are not periodic, you could implement this as an offset from the start time. Start with the time/date, then each data event contains an offset from the original time/date. Depending on the expected max interval, this could save you a lot of overhead as well.
SteveB
Just like the 'sliding window' method used in most compression methods...
(Wait a minute...was that example out in left field or what?)
Maybe something like the julian calender, but extended down to date/time offset from a certain start date/time, but then you'd get less than one day's worth of seconds in a word...