General - Timescale Blog

General

What the heck is time-series data (and why do I need a time-series database)?

1 Dec 2020 16 min read

This article is a primer on time-series data and why you may not want to use a “normal” database to store it. ✅ Get the basics, key database considerations, and more.

What the heck is time-series data (and why do I need a time-series database)?

9 Reasons to Choose Timescale vs. Influx and AWS Timestream

2 Jul 2020 3 min read

Why should you choose TimescaleDB over InfluxDB or AWS Timestream as your time-series database of choice? Let us count the ways (9 to be exact).

How We’re Building a Remote-First Team Culture (aka virtual event ideas that you’re welcome to steal)

6 May 2020 9 min read

As an engineering-centric organization that’s been 60%+ remote for most of our history, we’re creative with the ways we stay connected – and, with COVID-19 making us and all teams 100% remote, we’re sharing how we’ve created camaraderie to help you do the same.

Time-series compression algorithms, explained

22 Apr 2020 13 min read

Delta-delta encoding, Simple-8b, XOR-based compression, and more - these algorithms aren't magic, but combined they can save over 90% of storage costs and speed up queries. Here’s how they work.

Our Product Team's Reading List: What Moral Psychology, the Rust Belt, and framing can teach us about UX

17 Apr 2020 7 min read

Like many people, we've been catching up on our book backlog –and we're sharing our recent reads, plus what they've taught us about our work as product managers and engineers.

CTO Corner: this month in data (April 2020 edition)

7 Apr 2020 3 min read

Mike Freedman, Timescale CTO, shares some of the most interesting articles and papers about databases and distributed systems he's found in the past month.

Public Dataset Tips & Tricks: How to weave together public datasets to make sense of the world

19 Mar 2020 7 min read

Public datasets can help us gain insight into our business and our world. Combining public datasets either together or with our own data often requires a series of steps to cleanup (or “normalize”) the data. This blog post walks you through some techniques for data normalization.

Introducing #TSDBTipTuesday!

4 Feb 2020 8 min read

The theme of this month is using SQL for time-series data.

What is the State of PostgreSQL?

5 Dec 2019 5 min read

We created and distributed a survey to Postgres users around the globe to see how they are using the database in 2019 and the results are in…

NoSQL vs SQL: The Future of Data

8 Jul 2019 11 min read

After years of being left for dead, SQL today is making a comeback. How come? And what effect will this have on the data community?

Rethinking the Database Materialized View as an Index

12 Jun 2019 4 min read

By utilizing the properties of time-series data, can we make the maintenance of materialized views efficient enough so they act like indexes?

What is high cardinality, and how do time-series databases like InfluxDB and TimescaleDB compare?

25 Apr 2019 8 min read

A look into what causes high-cardinality, and how time-series databases handle this problem.

Why you should use a relational database instead of NoSQL for your IoT application

28 Feb 2019 5 min read

IoT data is complex and needs to be accessed by multiple users, so don’t make the mistake of creating data silos.

If PostgreSQL is the fastest growing database, then why is the community so small?

21 Feb 2019 3 min read

The database king continues its reign. For the second year in a row, PostgreSQL is still the fastest growing DBMS, however, its community is not keeping pace.

5 ways open source software companies make money

27 Nov 2018 9 min read

A guide on how to evaluate the long-term sustainability of the business behind any open-source software you are using (or considering working on yourself).

Open-source and the demise of proprietary software

10 Oct 2018 16 min read

RedHat, Elastic, MongoDB, Github, Pivotal, Greenplum, and more: Open-source software has finally come of age, is reshaping the entire software industry as we know it. Here’s why.

PostgreSQL as the substructure for IoT and the next wave of computing

19 Apr 2018 9 min read

How PostgreSQL accidentally became the ideal platform for IoT applications and services.

Why bother with NoSQL databases? Choose PostgreSQL for IoT.

13 Jul 2017 9 min read

IoT applications generate torrents of data. PostgreSQL is powerful but scales poorly. With TimescaleDB you can scale Postgres by 20x and harness its power for IoT.

Time-series data: Why (and how) to use a relational database instead of NoSQL

20 Apr 2017 14 min read

These days, time-series data applications (e.g., data center / server / microservice / container monitoring, sensor / IoT analytics, financial data analysis, etc.) are proliferating.