Timescale Newsletter Roundup: July Edition

Lacey Butler -

Get a quick breakdown of all the latest product updates, technical content, #webinarwednesday sessions, and TimescaleDB tips to help you take your time-series data skills to the next level 🔥.

We’re always releasing new features, creating new documentation and tutorials, and hosting virtual sessions to help developers do amazing things with their data. And, to make it easy for our community members to discover and get the resources they need to power their projects, teams, or business with analytics, we round up our favorite new pieces in our biweekly newsletter.

We’re on a mission to teach the world about time-series data, supporting and growing communities around the world.

And, sharing educational resources as broadly as possible is one way to do just that :).


Here’s a snapshot of the content we shared with our readers this month (subscribe to get updates straight to your inbox)

New technical content, videos & tutorials

[Session Replay]: Guide to Grafana Part IV: Advanced Topics & Time-Series Pro Tips >>

Catch our latest Grafana session to learn how to solve common Grafana issues, get answers to frequently asked questions, and continue on your journey to dashboarding mastery. You’ll get step-by-step demos and pro tips for time-shifting, using Postgres to efficiently drill into your metrics, and more.

[Live-coding session] : 5 Ways to Improve Your Postgres INSERT Performance >>

What’s even better than using Postgres? Learning ways to make it faster. Join @avthars on Wed, August 19 as he breaks down 5 techniques to improve your database ingest speed (plus best practices, pro tips, and technical resources).

  • 🗓 RSVP now
  • Can’t attend live? Register anyway & we’ll send you the recording + demos within 48 hours.

[NEW]: 13 tips to improve your INSERT performance using PostgreSQL >>

We have a lot of experience optimizing ingest performance for ourselves and community members, and, in this post, Mike shares a “cheatsheet” full of his favorite best practices and tips (includes advice for vanilla Postgres, plus a few TimescaleDB-specific ones).

  • Have questions or want to add a tip to our list? We’d love to hear from you - reach out on Slack.
  • ...and join our "5 Ways to Improve Your Postgres INSERT Performance" webinar (details above) to see a few of them in action.

New #remote-friendly events & community


[Meet Timescale CTO]: Join us for Office Hours on Tues, August 4 >>

If you have questions about database best practices, upcoming TimescaleDB releases, or want to know more about distributed computing topics, Office Hours - hosted by Timescale CTO Mike Freedman - is for you.

Simplified WsprDaemon architecture, showing data routes from wsprnet and 3rd party interfaces

[Community Spotlight #1] How WsprDaemon combines TimescaleDB and Grafana to analyze radio transmissions >>

Time-series data is everywhere – and, in this Developer Q & A, our friends at WsprDaemon share how they use TimescaleDB, Grafana, and various datasets to analyze radio transmissions, spot and compare trends in space weather, and more. (plus why they chose TimescaleDB over Influx 🙌).

[Community Spotlight #2]: TransferWise >>

We have amazing customers all over the world, including our friends @TransferWise, the fintech startup that 8 million+ customers trust to move billions of dollars per day. Learn how (and why) they selected TimescaleDB as their scalable time-series database of choice.

[ICYMI]: ListenBrainz moves to TimescaleDB >>

We always love to hear about how and why community members use TimescaleDB – and, ListenBrainz’ migration to TimescaleDB made quite the splash on Hacker News.

  • 🙏 to the team for sharing your story & welcome to the community!

Product Updates, Reading List & Etc.

[Product Development]: Timescale Forge is now in Public Preview >>

We’re excited to unveil the Public Preview of Timescale Forge, the easiest way to get TimescaleDB. Timescale Forge is a fully-managed cloud service and includes features to independently scale compute and storage, pause/resume instances, use native integrations, and (much) more coming soon.

  • Sign up to try it out (💯free for 30 days) - we’d love your feedback 🙏.
  • Subscribe to our Release Notes to get new releases and updates straight to your inbox.
  • We're proud to now give you the choice of two fully-managed relational database services for time-series data 🎊.
  • If you need Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud support or advanced enterprise features (VPC peering, SOC2, HIPAA compliance), continue to use Timescale Cloud.
Quick peek at the Timescale Forge UI

[Product Updates]: TimescaleDB 1.7.2 Release now available >>

We just released TimescaleDB 1.7.2, which includes medium-priority updates to continuous aggregates, downsampling, and compression and support for fast pruning of inlined functions.

[TimescaleDB Tip #1]: Use downsampling to roll up and retain the data you need >>

Combine continuous aggregates with data retention policies to retain the data you need & delete fine-grained data when it’s no longer necessary. Result: you save $ on long-term data storage costs, without sacrificing the ability to analyze your metrics.

[Timescale Tip #2]: Check out TimescaleDB Quick Starts (Python, Ruby & Node.js) to jumpstart your time-series analysis >>

We’ve created a few step-by-step guides to get you up and running with TimescaleDB. Each one takes you through connecting your app, creating tables, inserting rows, and executing your first time-series analysis query.

[Reading List]: How to build more accurate Grafana trend lines: plot two variables with series-override >>

Tying to plot multiple metrics on one Grafana graph, but running into issues? Learn how to use series-override to solve the problem of distorted scale with this handy how-to post.

[Reading List]: Build an application monitoring stack with TimescaleDB, Telegraf & Grafana >>

APM doesn't have to be rigid and expensive, and, in this post, we show you how to build a monitoring stack using open-source tools (Telegraf, Grafana, and TimescaleDB). You’ll get step-by-step guidance for instrumenting data collection, storing metrics, and visualizing them for real-time and historical analysis.

[Reading List]: How to use composite indexes to speed up time-series queries >>

Fact: the right index can reduce your query time by two or three orders of magnitude. In this old-but-good post from our Product team, you’ll learn how to build the right indexes for time-series data (3+ examples to help you get started!).

[Reading List]: Check out 4 ways to use SQL for time-series analysis >>

From schema design to SQL tool recommendations, we’ve rounded up quick and handy ways to use SQL to work with and get more from your time-series data.

[Team Timescale]: Announcing Timescale Shop >>

Over the years, community members continually asked when we’d launch a “swag store” – and the day has arrived!

[Timescale Team Fun]: Timescale People Manager Mel continues to introduce amazing team-building activities to appeal to all sensibilities, as well as deliver on old favorites, like Munch 'N Learns and Book Club.

Here's a quick peek a few of our latest remote team bonding ideas for inspiration💡.

To learn more about how we organize Munch 'N Learns, see past topics, and get other virtual-team building ideas, check out Mel's Virtual Event Guide.
📚 Timescale Book Club kicked off our monthly poll to solicit new read suggestions….and the results are in! If you’d like to follow along, check out “The Mom Test.”
For those looking to step up their cooking game, Team Timescale uses our #social-cooking Slack channel for recipe inspiration, ideas, and questions. Pictured here: Mike's world-famous homemade pizza and berry crumble.


Wrapping Up

And, that concludes this month’s newsletter roundup. We’ll continue to release new content, events, and more - posting monthly updates for everyone.

If you’d like to get updates as soon as they’re available, subscribe to our newsletter (2x monthly emails, prepared with 💛 and no fluff or jargon, promise).

Happy building!