Remember the early days of data acquisition/collection systems? They often ran on DOS, VMS or UNIX operating systems. They weren’t terribly speedy. And, there wasn’t much room for long-term data storage since memory systems were pricey.
Today, microprocessors are extremely fast, memory is cheap, and data collection systems are all GUI or web based and save more data than you’ll probably ever need. And that’s the problem. So much data! How in the world do you make sense of it?