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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Databases
  4. Databases
  5. RethinkDB vs TimescaleDB

RethinkDB vs TimescaleDB

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

RethinkDB
RethinkDB
Stacks292
Followers406
Votes307
GitHub Stars27.0K
Forks1.9K
TimescaleDB
TimescaleDB
Stacks226
Followers374
Votes44
GitHub Stars20.6K
Forks988

RethinkDB vs TimescaleDB: What are the differences?

RethinkDB: JSON. Scales to multiple machines with very little effort. Open source. RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very little effort. It has a pleasant query language that supports really useful queries like table joins and group by, and is easy to setup and learn; TimescaleDB: Scalable time-series database optimized for fast ingest and complex queries. Purpose-built as a PostgreSQL extension. TimescaleDB is the only open-source time-series database that natively supports full-SQL at scale, combining the power, reliability, and ease-of-use of a relational database with the scalability typically seen in NoSQL databases.

RethinkDB and TimescaleDB belong to "Databases" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by RethinkDB are:

  • JSON data model and immediate consistency.
  • Distributed joins, subqueries, aggregation, atomic updates.
  • Secondary, compound, and arbitrarily computed indexes.

On the other hand, TimescaleDB provides the following key features:

  • Packaged as a PostgreSQL extension
  • Full ANSI SQL
  • JOINs (e.g., across PostgreSQL tables)

RethinkDB and TimescaleDB are both open source tools. RethinkDB with 22.4K GitHub stars and 1.74K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than TimescaleDB with 7.28K GitHub stars and 385 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, RethinkDB has a broader approval, being mentioned in 37 company stacks & 25 developers stacks; compared to TimescaleDB, which is listed in 15 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.

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Advice on RethinkDB, TimescaleDB

Anonymous
Anonymous

Apr 21, 2020

Needs advice

We are building an IOT service with heavy write throughput and fewer reads (we need downsampling records). We prefer to have good reliability when comes to data and prefer to have data retention based on policies.

So, we are looking for what is the best underlying DB for ingesting a lot of data and do queries easily

381k views381k
Comments
Umair
Umair

Technical Architect at ERP Studio

Feb 12, 2021

Needs adviceonPostgreSQLPostgreSQLTimescaleDBTimescaleDBDruidDruid

Developing a solution that collects Telemetry Data from different devices, nearly 1000 devices minimum and maximum 12000. Each device is sending 2 packets in 1 second. This is time-series data, and this data definition and different reports are saved on PostgreSQL. Like Building information, maintenance records, etc. I want to know about the best solution. This data is required for Math and ML to run different algorithms. Also, data is raw without definitions and information stored in PostgreSQL. Initially, I went with TimescaleDB due to PostgreSQL support, but to increase in sites, I started facing many issues with timescale DB in terms of flexibility of storing data.

My major requirement is also the replication of the database for reporting and different purposes. You may also suggest other options other than Druid and Cassandra. But an open source solution is appreciated.

462k views462k
Comments
Benoit
Benoit

Principal Engineer at Sqreen

Sep 21, 2019

Decided

I chose TimescaleDB because to be the backend system of our production monitoring system. We needed to be able to keep track of multiple high cardinality dimensions.

The drawbacks of this decision are our monitoring system is a bit more ad hoc than it used to (New Relic Insights)

We are combining this with Grafana for display and Telegraf for data collection

155k views155k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

RethinkDB
RethinkDB
TimescaleDB
TimescaleDB

RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very little effort. It has a pleasant query language that supports really useful queries like table joins and group by, and is easy to setup and learn.

TimescaleDB: An open-source database built for analyzing time-series data with the power and convenience of SQL — on premise, at the edge, or in the cloud.

JSON data model and immediate consistency.;Distributed joins, subqueries, aggregation, atomic updates.;Secondary, compound, and arbitrarily computed indexes.;Hadoop-style map/reduce.;Friendly web and command-line administration tools.;Takes care of machine failures and network interrupts.;Multi-datacenter replication and failover.;Sharding and replication to multiple nodes.;Queries are automatically parallelized and distributed.;Lock-free operation via MVCC concurrency.
Packaged as a PostgreSQL extension;Full ANSI SQL;JOINs (e.g., across PostgreSQL tables);Complex queries;Secondary indexes;Composite indexes;Support for very high cardinality data;Triggers;Constraints;UPSERTS;JSON/JSONB;Ability to ingest out of order data;Ability to perform accurate rollups;Data retention policies;Fast deletes;Integration with PostGIS and the rest of the PostgreSQL ecosystem;
Statistics
GitHub Stars
27.0K
GitHub Stars
20.6K
GitHub Forks
1.9K
GitHub Forks
988
Stacks
292
Stacks
226
Followers
406
Followers
374
Votes
307
Votes
44
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 48
    Powerful query language
  • 46
    Excellent dashboard
  • 42
    JSON
  • 41
    Distributed database
  • 38
    Open source
Pros
  • 9
    Open source
  • 8
    Easy Query Language
  • 7
    Time-series data analysis
  • 5
    Established postgresql API and support
  • 4
    Reliable
Cons
  • 5
    Licensing issues when running on managed databases
Integrations
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
Prometheus
Prometheus
Equinix Metal
Equinix Metal
Ruby
Ruby
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
Django
Django
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
pgAdmin
pgAdmin
Python
Python
Kafka
Kafka
Datadog
Datadog

What are some alternatives to RethinkDB, TimescaleDB?

MongoDB

MongoDB

MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.

MySQL

MySQL

The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL Server is intended for mission-critical, heavy-load production systems as well as for embedding into mass-deployed software.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft® SQL Server is a database management and analysis system for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.

SQLite

SQLite

SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. Unlike most other SQL databases, SQLite does not have a separate server process. SQLite reads and writes directly to ordinary disk files. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file.

Cassandra

Cassandra

Partitioning means that Cassandra can distribute your data across multiple machines in an application-transparent matter. Cassandra will automatically repartition as machines are added and removed from the cluster. Row store means that like relational databases, Cassandra organizes data by rows and columns. The Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a close relative of SQL.

Memcached

Memcached

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

MariaDB

MariaDB

Started by core members of the original MySQL team, MariaDB actively works with outside developers to deliver the most featureful, stable, and sanely licensed open SQL server in the industry. MariaDB is designed as a drop-in replacement of MySQL(R) with more features, new storage engines, fewer bugs, and better performance.

ArangoDB

ArangoDB

A distributed free and open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values. Build high performance applications using a convenient SQL-like query language or JavaScript extensions.

InfluxDB

InfluxDB

InfluxDB is a scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics. It has a built-in HTTP API so you don't have to write any server side code to get up and running. InfluxDB is designed to be scalable, simple to install and manage, and fast to get data in and out.

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