I see that Pandas does not allow duplicate time series indexes yet (https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/643), but will be added soon. I am wondering if there is a good
There's nothing really to stop you right now:
In [17]: idf = df.set_index(['tag', 'epochTimeMS'], verify_integrity=False).sort_index()
In [18]: idf
Out[18]:
event timeTakenMS
tag epochTimeMS
tag1 1331782842381 event2 436
1331782842801 event1 16
1331782842801 event1 17
tag2 1331782841535 event1 1278
In [20]: idf.ix['tag1']
Out[20]:
event timeTakenMS
epochTimeMS
1331782842381 event2 436
1331782842801 event1 16
1331782842801 event1 17
Accessing specific values by timestamp will cause an exception (this is going to be improved, as you mention), but you can certainly work with the data. Now, if you want a fixed-length (in time space) window, that's not supported very well yet but I created an issue here:
https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/936
If you could speak up on the mailing list about your API requirements in your application it would be helpful for me and the guys since we're actively working on the time series capabilities right now.