TimescaleDB is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

time series database A time series database (TSDB) 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 ea ...

developed by Timescale Inc. It is written in C and extends

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

. TimescaleDB is a

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

and supports standard SQL queries. Additional SQL functions and table structures provide support for time series data oriented towards storage, performance, and analysis facilities for data-at-scale. One of the key features of TimescaleDB is its performance, which has been compared to

InfluxDB InfluxDB is an open-source time series database (TSDB) developed by the company InfluxData. It is written in the Go programming language for storage and retrieval of time series data in fields such as operations monitoring, application metr ...

. Time-based data partitioning provides for improved query execution and performance when used for time oriented applications. More granular partition definition is achieved through the use of user defined attributes. TimescaleDB is offered as

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

under the Apache 2.0 license. Additional features are offered in a community edition as source available software under the Timescale License Agreement (TLS).

History

Timescale was founded by Ajay Kulkarni (CEO) and

Michael J. Freedman Michael J. Freedman is an American computer scientist who is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, where he works on distributed systems, networking, and security. He is also the cofounder of database company ...

(CTO) in response to their need for a database solution to support

internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

workloads.

References

{{reflist Free and open-source software 2018 software Time series software Software using the Apache license Free software programmed in C Cross-platform free software