A distributed and scalable data historian framework is provided that allows historian functionality to be efficiently incorporated at various levels of an industrial enterprise. The framework includes a historian data interface system that provides a single interface and common protocol for configuring, managing, and viewing historian data located throughout a network of historian distributed across the industrial enterprise. The historian data interface system leverages a data model that models the enterprise and sources of historian data to facilitate fast and efficient retrieval of desired historian data. By unifying the distributed historians under a common framework, the data model can facilitate enterprise-level management of historian data collection and storage.