Preferred database solution for storing sensor data As a hobby project I am developing a system which stores data from different kind of sensors around the house. Currently it is implemented using ASP.Net MVC 6 and MongoDB for the database. (I choose MongoDB because I was curious about how it works) Every sensor peroidically posts data to the server on it's own.

For the sake of not having to store the same information possibly hundreds of times I am using references for redundant data. This data includes the type of a sensor, the data fields used by the sensor(and information about fields like it's name, etc).

Here is an example in JSON format:

// Sensors collection
{
    _id : 1,
    TypeId : 1
}

// SensorTypes
{
    _id : 1,
    GenericName : "Test sensor",
    FieldIds : [1, 2]
}

// Fields
[{
    _id : 1,
    Name : "field1",
    DecimalPlaces : 2
},
{
    _id : 2,
    Name : "field2",
    DecimalPlaces : 3
}]


Questions:


Is this good practice? Am I using correct and preferred way to avoid redundancy in my database?
"Schema" of my documents can be displayed like a graph. Does a graph database like Neo4j would be more suitable for my problem?


Thank you for your help!
In general you do not want to normalize the data you are stuffing into whichever NoSQL solution you are using, in other words, you want to leave the redundant information there. Otherwise you should be using a relational database system like MySQL,Postgres,SQLite, or MSSQL (Express edition is free, but has database size limits). If you use any of those systems, reducing redundant information would be beneficial.

Honestly, if you are looking to grab a bunch of sensor data, then display it as a graph at a later point, you might want to look into setting up a box with Elasticsearch + Kibana on it. You can get something up and running in a matter of minutes with VERY minimal amounts of configuration: https://www.elastic.co/products/kibana

When Neo4j calls itself a "graphing database" it is not graphs in the visual sense of the word, it is graphs in the relationship sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database

Hope some of this helps.