1. A non-transitory program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executed by the computer to perform the method steps for accelerating time series data base queries, the method comprising the steps of: segmenting an original time series of signal values into non-overlapping chunks, where a time-scale for each of the chunks is much less than the time scale of the entire time series; representing time series signal values in each chunk as a weighted superposition of atoms that are members of a shape dictionary, to create a compressed time series; storing said original time series and said compressed time series into a database, determining whether a query is answerable using said compressed time series or said original time series, and whether answering said query using said compressed time series is faster; and if answering the query is faster using the compressed representation, executing the query on weight coefficients of the compressed time series to produce a query result, and translating the query result back into an uncompressed representation.