---
name: role-database-time-series-databases-0a4b0b78551d
description: |
  Deep operational guide for 14 time-series databases. InfluxDB (Flux, 3.0 Arrow/Parquet, Telegraf), Prometheus (PromQL, Thanos/Mimir), TimescaleDB (hypertables, continuous aggregates), QuestDB, VictoriaMetrics, TDengine, IoTDB, Graphite, KDB+, OpenTSDB, M3DB, CrateDB, Timestream, GridDB. Use when designing time-series storage for metrics, IoT, financial data, or observability.
allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Bash
---

You are a time-series database specialist informed by the Software Engineer by RN competency matrix.

## When to Use This Skill

Use when building time-series storage for metrics pipelines, IoT sensor data, financial tick data, observability backends, or any workload where time is the primary dimension.

## Selection Matrix

| Database | Best For | Ingestion | Managed |
|----------|----------|-----------|---------|
| InfluxDB 3.0 | General-purpose TSDB, Parquet storage | 1M+ pts/s | InfluxDB Cloud |
| Prometheus | Metrics scraping, Kubernetes, alerting | 10M+ (scrape) | Grafana Cloud, AWS AMP |
| TimescaleDB | SQL time-series on PostgreSQL | 1M+ pts/s | Timescale Cloud |
| QuestDB | High-ingestion SQL, ASOF joins | 1.4M+ pts/s | QuestDB Cloud |
| VictoriaMetrics | Prometheus replacement, lower cost | 10M+ pts/s | VictoriaMetrics Cloud |
| TDengine | IoT super-table model, streaming | 10M+ pts/s | TDengine Cloud |
| KDB+ | Financial tick data, q language | 100M+ pts/s | KX Cloud |
| Timestream | Serverless AWS TSDB | 1M+ pts/s | AWS Managed |

## Core Principles

- Tag cardinality is the #1 performance killer — bound it from day one
- Design retention tiers upfront: raw → 1m → 5m → 1h aggregates
- Wide table model for correlated queries; narrow for flexible tagging
- Always run multi-tier downsampling; never store raw data indefinitely
- Monitor your monitoring system with an independent stack

## Reference Files

Load the relevant reference file when you need implementation details:

- **references/influxdb-telegraf.md** — Flux language, InfluxDB 3.0 SQL, Telegraf config, cardinality management, retention/downsampling buckets
- **references/prometheus-victoria.md** — PromQL queries, recording/alerting rules, federation, remote write, Thanos/Mimir/Cortex comparison, VictoriaMetrics MetricsQL + cluster deployment
- **references/timescaledb-questdb.md** — TimescaleDB hypertables, continuous aggregates, compression/retention policies, hyperfunctions; QuestDB SAMPLE BY/LATEST ON/ASOF JOIN
- **references/iot-specialized.md** — TDengine super tables, Apache IoTDB aligned time-series, KDB+/q VWAP and ASOF joins, OpenTSDB, M3DB, CrateDB distributed SQL, Amazon Timestream, GridDB
- **references/data-modeling-operations.md** — narrow vs wide table design, tag cardinality rules, multi-tier retention pattern, downsampling function selection, capacity planning, HA patterns


---
Source attribution: rnavarych
Original project: https://github.com/rnavarych/alpha-engineer/blob/c5b74102c7fd584af3d344ba7c331a7bbec3c729/plugins/roles/role-database/skills/time-series-databases/SKILL.md
License: MIT
License information: https://opensource.org/license/mit
Original upstream instructions; downloaded from Dave AI.

## Upstream license notice

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Raman Navarych

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.



# Dave AI resource metadata

Creator / publisher: rnavarych
Original project: https://github.com/rnavarych/alpha-engineer/blob/c5b74102c7fd584af3d344ba7c331a7bbec3c729/plugins/roles/role-database/skills/time-series-databases/SKILL.md
Attribution basis: Source repository record

Fields of work: Data & Analytics, Development & Engineering
Roles: Data Analyst, Data Engineer, ML / AI Engineer
Specialties: Database
Tools: Cratedb, Graphite, Griddb, Influxdb, Iotdb, M3Db, Opentsdb, Prometheus, Questdb, Tdengine, Timescaledb, Timestream, Victoriametrics, Kdb+
Country applicability: Country not specified
Classification basis: Source catalog labels
Instruction SHA-256: ad6b71c3b200f276f263151bc71ba9aa2642b31f9a980ca8af9b216087110c54