setup-timescaledb-hypertables

TimescaleDB Complete Setup

Instructions for insert-heavy data patterns where data is inserted but rarely changed:

• Time-series data (sensors, metrics, system monitoring)
• Event logs (user events, audit trails, application logs)
• Transaction records (orders, payments, financial transactions)
• Sequential data (records with auto-incrementing IDs and timestamps)
• Append-only datasets (immutable records, historical data)

Step 1: Create Hypertable

CREATE TABLE your_table_name (
    timestamp TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL,
    entity_id TEXT NOT NULL,          -- device_id, user_id, symbol, etc.
    category TEXT,                    -- sensor_type, event_type, asset_class, etc.
    value_1 DOUBLE PRECISION,         -- price, temperature, latency, etc.
    value_2 DOUBLE PRECISION,         -- volume, humidity, throughput, etc.
    value_3 INTEGER,                  -- count, status, level, etc.
    metadata JSONB                    -- flexible additional data
) WITH (
    tsdb.hypertable,
    tsdb.partition_column='timestamp',
    tsdb.enable_columnstore=true,     -- Disable if table has vector columns
    tsdb.segmentby='entity_id',       -- See selection guide below
    tsdb.orderby='timestamp DESC',     -- See selection guide below
    tsdb.sparse_index='minmax(value_1),minmax(value_2),minmax(value_3)' -- see selection guide below
);

Compression Decision

• Enable by default for insert-heavy patterns
• Disable if table has vector type columns (pgvector) - indexes on vector columns incompatible with columnstore

Partition Column Selection

Must be time-based (TIMESTAMP/TIMESTAMPTZ/DATE) or integer (INT/BIGINT) with good temporal/sequential distribution.

Common patterns:

• TIME-SERIES: timestamp, event_time, measured_at
• EVENT LOGS: event_time, created_at, logged_at
• TRANSACTIONS: created_at, transaction_time, processed_at
• SEQUENTIAL: id (auto-increment when no timestamp), sequence_number
• APPEND-ONLY: created_at, inserted_at, id