InfluxDB is a

time series database A time series database is a software system that is optimized for storing and serving time series through associated pairs of time(s) and value(s). In some fields, ''time series'' may be called profiles, curves, traces or trends. Several early tim ...

(TSDB) developed by the company InfluxData. It is used for storage and retrieval of

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. ...

data in fields such as operations monitoring, application metrics,

Internet of Things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

sensor data, and real-time analytics. It also has support for processing data from

Graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

. The latest version of InfluxDB, 3.x, is written in the

Rust programming language Rust is a general-purpose programming language emphasizing performance, type safety, and concurrency. It enforces memory safety, meaning that all references point to valid memory. It does so without a conventional garbage collector; instea ...

. Versions 1.x and 2.x are written in Go.

History

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

-backed company Errplane began developing InfluxDB as an open-source project in late 2013 for performance monitoring and alerting. Errplane raised an $8.1M

Series A A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

financing led by

Mayfield Fund Mayfield, also known as Mayfield Fund, is a US-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage to growth-stage investments in enterprise and consumer technology companies. Founded in 1969 and based in Menlo Park, California. History The ...

and Trinity Ventures in November 2014. In late 2015, Errplane officially changed its name to InfluxData Inc. InfluxData raised Series B round of funding of $16 million in September 2016. In February 2018, InfluxData closed a $35 million Series C round of funding led by Sapphire Ventures. Another round of $60 million was disclosed in 2019. In February of 2023, another $81 million was closed in a Series E round.

Technical overview

InfluxDB provides an

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

-like language with built-in time-centric functions for querying a data structure composed of measurements, series, and points. Each point consists of several key-value pairs called the fieldset and a timestamp. When grouped together by a set of key-value pairs called the tagset, these define a series. Finally, series are grouped together by a string identifier to form a measurement. Values can be 64-bit integers, 64-bit floating points, strings, and booleans. Points are indexed by their time and tagset. Retention policies are defined on a measurement and control how data is downsampled and deleted. Continuous Queries run periodically, storing results in a target measurement.

Events

InfluxData regularly hosts events related to InfluxDB called InfluxDays. The InfluxDays are technical conventions focused on the evolution of InfluxDB on technical and business points of view. Those events take place once a year in three locations:

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. The InfluxDays cover a wide variety of different subjects:

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

and coding talks as well as business-focused and practical workshops. Companies can showcase how they use InfluxDB.

Line protocol

InfluxDB accepts data via HTTP, TCP, and UDP. It defines a line protocol backwards compatible with Graphite and takes the form: :measurement(,tag_key=tag_val)* field_key=field_val(,field_key_n=field_value_n)* (nanoseconds-timestamp)?

Licensing

Contributors to InfluxDB need to give InfluxData Inc. the right to license the contributions and the rest of the software in any way, including under a closed-source license. The

Contributor License Agreement A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license. Rationale CLAs can be used to enable vendors to easily purs ...

claims not to be a

copyright transfer agreement A copyright transfer agreement or copyright assignment agreement is an agreement that transfers the copyright for a work from the copyright owner to another party. This is one legal option for publishers and authors of books, magazines, movies, t ...

Closed source clustering components

In May 2016, InfluxData announced that the

computer cluster A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The newes ...

component of InfluxDB would be sold as closed-source software in order to create a sustainable source of funding for the project's development. Community reaction was mixed, with some feeling the move was a "

bait and switch Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also employed in other contexts. First, the merchant "baits" the customer by advertising a product or service at a low price; then when the customer goes to purchase the item, they disco ...

InfluxDB 3 changes open source offerings

InfluxDB 3 Core is InfluxData's newest open source product and is intentionally designed to be an “edge data collector”, not a replacement for InfluxDB OSS v1 and v2. InfluxDB 3 Core has a 5 database limit and does not include a data compactor for fast historical querying. Purchasing a software license for InfluxDB 3 Enterprise is required to replace InfluxDB OSS v1 and v2 functionality in a commercial setting, though a free version of InfluxDB 3 Enterprise will be available for hobbyist and home use.

References

External links

* * {{GitHub, influxdata/influxdb 2013 software Software using the MIT license Structured storage Time series software Free software programmed in Rust