Timebase 1.3 Release Notes

Version History

1.3.4

1.3.3

1.3.2

1.3.1

1.3.0

 

Download Version 1.3.4

Release date: April 27, 2026

Stability through memory optimization

This release improves Historian stability through memory optimization and automatic recovery from corrupted dataset files. The Collector receives reliability fixes for the store-and-forward send loop and the OPC UA plugin's handling of tag names containing dots. Note: existing Collectors require a small Serilog configuration update - see Upgrade Notes.

Historian improvements

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• ObjectBlock Memory Optimization - Optimized memory usage in the Historian's object storage (ObjectBlock), eliminating gradual memory growth on long-running services holding many object datasets.

• Auto-Recovery from File Corruption - When the Historian detects corrupted dataset files at load time (typically caused by an uncontrolled shutdown), it now automatically restores them from their backup files if available, allowing datasets to recover without manual intervention.

Collector improvements

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Collector Store-and-Forward - Fixed a bug which had the potential of terminating the store-and-forward send loop.

• Collector Buffer Size Display - Fixed a bug where the Collector buffer size stopped updating in the UI.

• OPC UA Plugin - Tagnames with Dots - Fixed OPC UA topic parsing and node matching so that tag names containing dots are correctly handled instead of being incorrectly split into segments.

• Simulator Plugin - Configuration Size Limit Increased - Increased the limit of the Simulator configuration file size limit so that larger and more complex simulation can be created.

Timebase Service Starter (Windows)

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Initialization Logging - Added initialization logs to the Service Starter and additional error logging around application startup, making startup issues easier to diagnose.

• Component Links - Component links in the Service Starter UI now correctly use https:// when the component is configured with TLS.

 

Download Version 1.3.3

Release date: April 15, 2026

Hardened Store and Forward

This release focuses on Collector reliability and Simulator realism. The store-and-forward pipeline has been hardened against data loss from potential race conditions, buffered data is persisted on shutdown, and stale recovery files are cleaned up after successful delivery to the Historian. The Simulator engine now emits data in real time for more realistic live demonstrations.

Collector improvements

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Buffer Persistence on Shutdown - The Collector now persists any remaining buffered data to disk during graceful shutdown, preventing data loss when the service is stopped while data is still queued for delivery.

• Store-and-Forward Race Condition Fix - Fixed an intermittent race condition in the store-and-forward pipeline that could cause data loss under high load. The send pipeline now processes chunks sequentially per dataset, ensuring reliable ordering and delivery.

• Store-and-Forward File Cleanup - Stale .faulted and .state recovery files are now automatically deleted after data is successfully delivered to the Historian, preventing unnecessary reprocessing on restart.

Simulator improvements

Improvements

• Real-Time Data Emission - The Simulator engine now emits data points only when their timestamp reaches the current time, producing a realistic live data stream. Previously, all generated data (including future timestamps) was emitted immediately, which made demos less realistic. The engine now sleeps between data points during real-time operation while still backfilling historical data at full speed.

• Shutdown State Recovery - The Simulator now records a stop timestamp on shutdown and skips already-emitted data on restart, preventing duplicate data points after a service restart.

Download Version 1.3.2

Improved Security. Late Data Management

Release date: April 09, 2026

This release introduces automatic TLS certificate management across all Timebase components. The Historian receives a new query framework for UI and API filtering, a TVQ data view for inspecting tag data, and Late Data Age configuration for controlling how datasets handle out-of-order data.

What’s new at a glance

• TVQ Data View - The Historian UI now includes a dedicated data view for browsing Time-Value-Quality (TVQ) records directly from the Tag Grid. Supports relative time range selection for quickly inspecting recent data.

• Late Data Age - Datasets now support a configurable "Late Data Age" parameter that controls how far back in time incoming data points can be accepted. This is visible in the Dataset Editor, giving operators more control over late-arriving data handling.

• Tag Grid Query Filtering - The Tag Grid now supports structured query syntax with field-specific filters, wildcard matching, and session-persistent query strings. The same query syntax is also available via the ?query= parameter on the GET Tag API endpoint.

• Root Certificate Authority - Pulse now acts as a Root CA for the Timebase deployment. It generates and manages a 4096-bit RSA root certificate, signs leaf certificates for other components via a CSR endpoint, and distributes the CA certificate for trust establishment.

• Automatic Certificate Lifecycle - Pulse generates, monitors, and reloads TLS certificates automatically. Certificates approaching expiry are detected and regenerated. The reload service hot-swaps certificates without requiring a Pulse restart.

• Certificate Generation - The Service Starter now generates TLS certificates at startup when certificate auto-management is enabled, allowing managed components to launch over HTTPS immediately.

• Pulse Integration for Certificates - Service Starter includes Pulse connection configuration and certificate management settings in the bootstrap config, enabling managed components to sync certificates from Pulse.
  
  

Historian enhancements

• Added deserialization validation check before promoting MessagePack files to backup, preventing corrupted backups.
• Fixed soft-deleted tags incorrectly being set back to 'active' status.
• Tag API response now includes a nested last known value with valuestring for easier client consumption.
• Included system tags in the Tag Grid display.
• Updated API documentation and examples for Late Data Age endpoints.
• Added automatic TLS certificate management. Certificates are generated, synced from Pulse, and hot-reloaded without restart.

Explorer improvements

• Added automatic TLS certificate management and Pulse TLS connection support.
• Fixed null reference error when adding new historians after all existing ones had been removed.
• Fixed chart not saving changes correctly.
• Fixed system time not updating properly when scrolling in the context band.

Timebase Service Starter Improvements

• Added default Pulse and CertManagement configuration to the settings.
• Added Kestrel HTTPS configuration models for all managed components (Historian, Collector, Explorer, Pulse).

 

Download Version 1.3.1

Interoperability upgrade. Stability improved

Release date: February 13, 2026

Timebase 1.3.1 introduces the i3X API for CESMII interoperability, Server-Sent Events (SSE) for lightweight real-time data streaming, and real-time TagInfo change notifications. It also includes significant Explorer trending stability fixes and a Collector plugin memory leak fix.

What’s new at a glance

• i3X Interoperability API - New REST API implementing the i3X standard for CESMII interoperability. Supports browsing datasets, folders, and tags via a hierarchical namespace, querying current and historical data, and real-time subscriptions via Server-Sent Events. Includes full Swagger documentation with grouped endpoint categories (Explore, Query, Subscribe).

• Server-Sent Events (SSE) Streaming - New lightweight streaming endpoints for real-time tag data and tag metadata changes. SSE provides a simpler alternative to SignalR for clients that only need one-way data push, such as web dashboards and third-party integrations. Supports wildcard pattern subscriptions.

• Real-time TagInfo Change Notifications - Clients can now subscribe to tag metadata changes (e.g., UOM, description updates) via both SignalR and SSE, enabling UIs to stay in sync when tag configuration is modified.

Historian enhancements

• Added UOM and Fields columns to the tag filter mechanism in the Tag Grid.
• Fixed Tag Grid columns snapping unexpectedly after the first load.
• Fixed an unhandled exception when tags had null or duplicate UOM or Field values in the Tag Editor.
• Fixed SSE connections not shutting down cleanly during server shutdown.
• Fixed SSE payloads failing when tag values were null.
• Improved wildcard matching by separating it into a reusable service, enabling consistent pattern matching across SignalR, SSE, and i3X subscriptions.

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Explorer improvements

• Fixed live mode jitter causing erratic trend updates.
• Fixed the "now" cursor not refreshing correctly when redrawing trend data.
• Fixed fixed time frames not updating properly in live mode.
• Fixed future values not displaying in trend bands when data was available.
• Fixed null values not displaying correctly in the trend legend; null values now show in an alternative color.
• Fixed aggregation display for null values in the legend.
• Fixed Docker deployments not using the correct initial sources.config template.
• Fixed Support menu version link not pointing to the correct release notes URL.
• Fixed appsettings.Docker.json build action properties for correct Docker image configuration.

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Collector Fix

• Plugin Memory Leak - Fixed a memory leak across MQTT, OPC UA, SparkplugB, and Telegraf collector plugins that could cause increasing memory consumption over extended collection periods.

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Timebase Service Starter Improvements

• Authentication Configuration - Service Starter now includes authentication property configuration for all managed components.
• Pulse Integration - Added Pulse integration properties to Service Starter for configuring real-time streaming alongside other components.
• Fixed enum serialization issue that could cause errors when starting up components.

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Download Version 1.3

Smarter ingestion. Faster writes. More control.

Release date: January 30, 2026

Timebase 1.3 is a foundational release focused on a problem every industrial system eventually faces: reality is messy.

Networks drop. Devices buffer. Data arrives late. Volumes spike. Systems restart. Engineers need the historian to behave predictably when the world does not.

This release strengthens Timebase across three core areas:

• reliable ingestion under real plant conditions

• higher-throughput and lower-memory data movement

• better operational tooling for users and integrators

The result is a historian that handles disorder without sacrificing performance or trust.

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What’s new at a glance

Timebase 1.3 introduces:

• native late data handling in the historian

   

• major performance improvements in ingestion and indexing

   

• improved state boundary management for large datasets

   

• wildcard subscriptions for scalable real-time access

   

• authentication support in Timebase Explorer

   

• parallel write support in the Ignition module

Each of these changes is covered in detail below.

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Historian enhancements

Late data handling

Timebase Historian now supports ingesting data that arrives out of chronological order.

Late data is common in industrial systems, especially when:

• edge devices buffer during network outages

• store-and-forward queues flush after reconnect

• multiple collectors publish asynchronously

Previously, out-of-sequence data was rejected to protect performance and ordering guarantees. In 1.3, Timebase can safely accept late data within defined constraints.

Key characteristics:

• configurable Late Data Tolerance, default 100 ms

   

• accepted only within active blocks (last 30 days)

   

• merged automatically during the next indexing cycle

   

• typically queryable within approximately one minute

Late data points are marked using a vendor-specific quality bit so analytics can distinguish them without altering original quality semantics.

A new system metric, Dataset.Writes.Late, allows monitoring of late data ingestion rates.

This change allows Timebase to tolerate real network behavior without compromising chronological integrity.

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Improved state management

Historian tag state tracking has been refactored to improve scalability.

Boundary and transition metadata is now stored in block-level partitioned files rather than centralized structures. This significantly reduces memory pressure and improves performance when working with:

• high-frequency state tags

• long-running datasets

• large numbers of transitions

The behavior of state queries remains unchanged, but performance under load improves substantially.

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Dataset existence API

A new endpoint is now available:

GET /dataset/{datasetId}/exists

This lightweight call allows client applications and services to verify dataset availability without loading full metadata.

Common uses include:

• startup validation

• client-side caching

• automated provisioning workflows

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Additional historian improvements

• faster TVQ ingestion path

• optimized dataset size calculations

• improved query logging with full query visibility

• enhanced tag metadata envelopes

• fixed point-in-time query accuracy

• deprecated single-tag writes in favor of batch operations

These changes improve both performance and diagnosability in production environments.

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Wildcard subscriptions for real-time access

Timebase WebSocket subscriptions now support MQTT-style wildcard patterns.

This allows clients to subscribe to large tag groups using naming structure instead of explicit tag lists.

Supported features include:

• single-level wildcard +

• multi-level wildcard #

• support for / and . delimiters

• automatic inclusion of newly created tags

Rules:

• matches one and only one hierarchy level

• cannot span multiple levels

• may appear anywhere in the pattern

Examples:

enterprise/site/+/temperature 

Matches: 

enterprise/site/line1/temperature

enterprise/site/line2/temperature

Does not match:

enterprise/site/temperature

enterprise/line1/zone1/temperature 

When a wildcard subscription is created:

• the last known value for all matching tags is delivered

• future updates are streamed automatically

• new tags matching the pattern are included without resubscription

This enables scalable real-time consumers such as:

• UNS subscribers

• dashboards

• alerting services

• AI pipelines

Direct tag subscriptions continue to work unchanged.

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Explorer improvements

User authentication

Timebase Explorer now supports authenticated users.

The UI displays the currently logged-in user and provides login and logout workflows tied to configured authentication providers.

This prepares Explorer for multi-user deployments and controlled access environments.

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Save As behavior

When modifying the path of a visual, users are now prompted to Save As instead of overwriting the original file.

This prevents accidental loss of existing visuals and aligns with expected engineering workflows.

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Band management improvements

Creating new bands now includes confirmation dialogs when items remain in the current band, reducing accidental layout issues when organizing trends.

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Collector updates

Sparkplug B reliability improvements

The Sparkplug B collector plugin now includes:

• configurable retry counts for birth messages

• adjustable retry timers

• improved cancellation token handling

These changes significantly reduce connection edge cases and prevent endless retry loops when brokers are unavailable.

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Ignition module release 8.3.2

The Timebase Historian Ignition module was released alongside 1.3 and requires Historian 1.3 or newer.

This update focuses heavily on performance and memory efficiency.

Key improvements include:

• parallel writes to Historian

• configurable maximum concurrent writes

• improved chunking and sorting logic

• reduced memory pressure during large transfers

These changes are most visible during Ignition store-and-forward recovery, where throughput improvements can be substantial without requiring configuration changes.

Additional fixes include:

• corrected missing query results

• full string tag support

• improved URL encoding

• trimmed configuration values to prevent whitespace errors

There are no breaking changes.

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Service stack improvements

• automatic endpoint configuration when adding components

• improved Service Starter UI property editing

These changes simplify deployment and reduce manual configuration steps.

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Upgrade considerations

Before upgrading, review the following:

Late Data Tolerance
The default tolerance is 100 ms. Systems using store-and-forward or buffered edge devices may want to increase this value.

Explorer Authentication
Authentication providers must be configured if login control is required.

Ignition Module
Historian 1.3 is required for Ignition module version 8.3.2.

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Why this release matters

Timebase 1.3 is not about features for features’ sake.

It is about closing the gap between how industrial systems behave in theory and how they behave in practice.

Late data happens.
Backfill happens.
Burst writes happen.
Networks fail.

This release ensures that when those things occur, the historian does not become the bottleneck or the source of doubt.

Timebase 1.3 makes the system more tolerant, more scalable, and more predictable under real operating conditions.