However, we don't store data (besides temporarily caching it) so if you want to view history it has to be present in the existing feed.
The first type use logic which we have defined up front to extract the appropriate information for display. We apply little or no logic on the custom data feeds as that is assumed to have been carried out by the provider, usually when the XML/JSON file is generated.
If you have an obscure source of data, or it's sourced from a service we don't yet extract from, then I'd suggest writing a script to extract and massage the data into a format we accept and point your dashboard at it. We have definitions and example scripts in our support forum and I'm more than happy to give you a hand setting it up if that would be useful for you.