Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4. Practical Time Series Tools
“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”
—Albert Einstein
As valuable as theory is, practice matters more.
Chapter 3
described the theory behind high-
performance time series databases leading up to the hybrid and direct-insertion blob architec-
ture that allows very high ingest and analysis rates. This chapter describes how that theory
can be implemented using open source software. The open source tools described in this
chapter mainly comprise those listed in
Table 4-1
.
Table 4-1. Open source tools useful for preparing, loading, and accessing data in high-
performance NoSQL time series databases.
Open Source Tool
Author
Purpose
Open TSDB
Benoit Sigoure (originally)
Collect, process, and load time series data into
storage tier
Extensions to Open
TSDB
MapR Technologies
Enable direct blog insertion
Grafana
Torkel Ödegaard and Coding In-
stinct AB
User interface for accessing and visualizing time
series data
We also show how to analyze Open TSDB time series data using open source tools such as R
and Apache Spark. At the end of this chapter, we describe how you can attach Grafana, an
open source dashboarding tool, to Open TSDB to make it much more useful.
Introduction to Open TSDB: Benefits and Limitations
Originally just for systems monitoring, Open TSDB has proved far more versatile and useful
than might have been imagined originally. Part of this versatility and longevity is due to the
fact that the underlying storage engine, based on either Apache HBase or MapR-DB, allows
