Ask HN: Does anyone use InfluxDB? Or should we switch? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does anyone use InfluxDB? Or should we switch?

2 pointsramikalai6 comments

We're looking at adding an analytics product and need to use a time series database. After initial research, it seemed like InfluxDB was the way to go.

But we ran into an issue - which version do we use? It seems like they're pushing V3 but we've struggled to get the Node client to query data (writes seem to work). Anyone have experience with this?

View on HN

(:alert: I work for Timescale :alert:)

It's funny, we hear this more and more "we did some research and landed on Influx and ... help it's confusing".

We actually wrote an article about what we think, you can find it here: https://www.timescale.com/blog/what-influxdb-got-wrong/

As the QuestDB folks mentioned if you want a drop in replacement for Influx then they would be an option, it kinda sounds that's not what you want though - why buy into an ecosystem which isn't a good fit for you?

If you want something based on PostgreSQL, rock-solid, supports full SQL, and gives you all the benefits of a relational database, combined with all the functionality of a time-series database then give https://docs.timescale.com a look.

We have a cloud product at https://timescale.com if you're into that.

Update: Have been digging into this more and it looks like we're going to switch to QuestDB.

Seems like a solid bet with clear roadmap, pricing and strong performance. Also, looks to be more affordable than Timescale.

InfluxDB was such a bait though - it has potential but unfortunately, don't want to take that risk with our infrastructure.

Thanks for the answers below - was really helpful in making a decision.

Awesome, don't hesitate to reach out to the team at https://slack.questdb.io/ if you have any questions!

Thanks - already have a couple. See you there :-)

I agree that the difference in versions is confusing!

If InfluxDB is not the right fit, QuestDB can be a good drop-in replacement as it uses a high-performance implementation of the InfluxDB Line Protocol for ingesting data and SQL for queries. There are several SQL extensions for time-series data to simplify queries, such as SAMPLE BY (downsampling), WHERE ... IN (time intervals), LATEST ON (latest records) and ASOF JOIN (time-series joins).

An intro about QuestDB can be found here: https://questdb.io/docs/ And a live demo with three datasets (one of them has got data being streamed live): https://demo.questdb.io/

Another well-known time-series database includes TimescaleDB, an extension built on top of Postgres.

I should disclose that I'm a co-founder of QuestDB.

What are your requirements? We see some people switching from InfluxDB to QuestDB. Common reasons include SQL support (InfluxDB strategy is a bit confusing here), performance and issues with high-cardinality in InfluxDB.

Full Disclosure: I work for QuestDB and I am obviously biased.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com