We're using TimescaleDB to store log events - so each row has a timestamp, some properties, and a log message. And a lot of that is actually in a JSONB column.

Not the archetypal time series use case, but TimescaleDB is still really useful.

TSDB's compression means we can store a huge volume of data in a fraction of the space of a standard Postgres table. You can achieve even better compression ratios and performance if you spend time designing your schema carefully, but honestly we didn't see the need, as just throwing data in gets us something like 10:1 compression and great performance.

TSDB's chunked storage engine means that queries along chunking dimensions (e.g. timestamp) are super-fast, as it knows exactly which files to read.

Chunking also means that data retention policies execute nearly instantaneously, as it's literally just deleting files from disk, rather than deleting rows one-by-one - millions of rows are gone in an instant!

And best of all, this all works in Postgres, and we can query TSDB data just the same as regular data.

All that combined easily justified the decision to use TSDB - and if you're familiar with Postgres, it's actually really simple to get started with. Really, we'd of needed a business justification not to use it!

Much love for the TimescaleDB team!