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Had me until claiming that InfluxDB was the first mainstream TSDB in 2013. OpenTSDB (2010)? Graphite (2008)? RRDtool (1999)? Maybe Influx took off in a way the

Had me until claiming that InfluxDB was the first mainstream TSDB in 2013. OpenTSDB (2010)? Graphite (2008)? RRDtool (1999)? Maybe Influx took off in a way these prior projects didn't, but people have been storing time series data for decades.

PeterZaitsev 2y ago
I think While OpenTSDB was reasonably general purpose, Graphite and RRDTools were done for very specific monitoring use cases.
- IOT_Apprentice 2y ago
  We used a customized version of OpenTSDB at eBay to do monitoring of everything on the platform, including the search infrastructure. This was during the time eBay built a private cloud.
- johnorourke 2y ago
  RRDTool was the generalised version of the TSDB that was born for the specific use case, MRTG. It could be used for anything. Hopefully I've remembered that correctly!
osigurdson 2y ago
InfluxDB always seemed like it was run by children who are good at raising VC money.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  Eventually one of their rewrites will find product market fit.
- dijit 2y ago
  Agreed, after trying to buy a commercial license from them I was left… wanting to avoid the company entirely.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Being familiar with both KDB and somewhat so with InfluxDB .. it strikes me as a challenging space. I suspect there just isn't much money in it. Oddly InfluxDB has raised amounts of VC money approaching KDB parent companies current market cap. I know VC raised and market cap are not directly comparable, but what is the hoped-for enterprise value at exit of NewCo if the IncumbentCo is worth Z? My take is that orgs with real revenue-generating time series data challenges, budget and dev staff to cook up solutions have long ago bought KDB licenses or rolled their own in-house column store. Orgs using time series DBs for telemetry/observability/etc type of "back office" problems (where you are willing to downsample/conflate/offload history) either don't want to pay a dime, or want a fully formed SaaS solution with pretty GUI, alerting, etc like a DataDog they will like $10M/year to. Not a lot of middle ground oddly.
beagle3 2y ago
Also K (1993) and A+ (1988) although the former only became public in 1998 or so, and the latter in 2003 - they were only available inside Morgan Stanley in the beginning IIRC.
- jnordwick 2y ago
  I was working in K2 in 1999, and it was public then. This is back when it had the built in GUI and dependency graph. I remember the first time somebody showed it to me, and I didn't think it was very impressive. It took about 2-3 months of messing with it before I realized how very wrong I was.

PeterZaitsev 2y ago

I think While OpenTSDB was reasonably general purpose, Graphite and RRDTools were done for very specific monitoring use cases.

IOT_Apprentice 2y ago
We used a customized version of OpenTSDB at eBay to do monitoring of everything on the platform, including the search infrastructure. This was during the time eBay built a private cloud.
johnorourke 2y ago
RRDTool was the generalised version of the TSDB that was born for the specific use case, MRTG. It could be used for anything. Hopefully I've remembered that correctly!

osigurdson 2y ago

InfluxDB always seemed like it was run by children who are good at raising VC money.

candiddevmike 2y ago
Eventually one of their rewrites will find product market fit.
dijit 2y ago
Agreed, after trying to buy a commercial license from them I was left… wanting to avoid the company entirely.
steveBK123 2y ago
Being familiar with both KDB and somewhat so with InfluxDB .. it strikes me as a challenging space. I suspect there just isn't much money in it. Oddly InfluxDB has raised amounts of VC money approaching KDB parent companies current market cap. I know VC raised and market cap are not directly comparable, but what is the hoped-for enterprise value at exit of NewCo if the IncumbentCo is worth Z? My take is that orgs with real revenue-generating time series data challenges, budget and dev staff to cook up solutions have long ago bought KDB licenses or rolled their own in-house column store. Orgs using time series DBs for telemetry/observability/etc type of "back office" problems (where you are willing to downsample/conflate/offload history) either don't want to pay a dime, or want a fully formed SaaS solution with pretty GUI, alerting, etc like a DataDog they will like $10M/year to. Not a lot of middle ground oddly.

beagle3 2y ago

Also K (1993) and A+ (1988) although the former only became public in 1998 or so, and the latter in 2003 - they were only available inside Morgan Stanley in the beginning IIRC.

jnordwick 2y ago
I was working in K2 in 1999, and it was public then. This is back when it had the built in GUI and dependency graph. I remember the first time somebody showed it to me, and I didn't think it was very impressive. It took about 2-3 months of messing with it before I realized how very wrong I was.