Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

pradeepchhetri.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#11

Post by gfody »

csdvrx wrote: post #2

Key quote from the article: > Overall, although some TimescaleDB queries became faster by enabling compression but many others became bit slower probably due to decompression overhead. This may be the reason why TimescaleDB disable compression by default This matches my experience: ClickHouse is generally faster, and a better solution for time series (more robust, more mature, ...) unless you have a highly specific s…

if you're going to compare these two you really ought to get into their materialized views where the real-world performance comes from, and ideally dive into their respective limitations

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#12

Post by radiospiel »

PeterZaitsev wrote: post #9

Wait was not TimescaleDB completely leave Clickhouse in the dust both in terms of query performance and compression ? https://blog.timescale.com/blog/what-is-clickhouse-how-does-... I think this series of posts confirms the first law of Benchmarketing - for any system one can come up with "unbiased" benchmark which confirms its superiority

The timescale example speaks of 110 mio rows, the blogpost here only has 11 mio rows. And thta is probably only a start…

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#13

Post by akulkarni »

csdvrx wrote: post #2

Key quote from the article: > Overall, although some TimescaleDB queries became faster by enabling compression but many others became bit slower probably due to decompression overhead. This may be the reason why TimescaleDB disable compression by default This matches my experience: ClickHouse is generally faster, and a better solution for time series (more robust, more mature, ...) unless you have a highly specific s…

  I have no doubt that, as usual, akulkarni will make a good PR job / community outreach to explain why, numbers and experience be damned, TimescaleDB is better!
I don't like responding to bullies and people who enter dialogues without good intentions.

But since this is a public forum, I'll answer your comment:

In general: ClickHouse is better than TimescaleDB for OLAP. TimescaleDB is better for time-series. If you don't believe me, that's fine! Each workload is different and you should test it yourself.

p.s. Let's keep HackerNews a more positive place. Negative comments are unnecessary, not productive, and honestly just make the author look immature.

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#14

Post by pradeepchhetri »

radiospiel wrote: post #12
PeterZaitsev wrote: post #9

Wait was not TimescaleDB completely leave Clickhouse in the dust both in terms of query performance and compression ? https://blog.timescale.com/blog/what-is-clickhouse-how-does-... I think this series of posts confirms the first law of Benchmarketing - for any system one can come up with "unbiased" benchmark which confirms its superiority

The timescale example speaks of 110 mio rows, the blogpost here only has 11 mio rows. And thta is probably only a start…

I selected only 11M rows for this blog because I used the dataset linked in TimescaleDB docs[0]. The dataset linked in CH docs has 1.2B rows[1]. The goal was to make comparison on dataset which both of the databases agrees upon.

[0] https://docs.timescale.com/timescaledb/latest/tutorials/nyc-...

[1] https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/getting-started/example-datas...

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#15

Post by eatonphil »

PeterZaitsev wrote: post #10
zepolen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has used both in production environments under various workloads, I can, without a doubt, tell you that Clickhouse spanks the crap out of TimescaleDB. The only use case where TimescaleDB is more useful is the ability to mutating/deleting single rows but even there, Clickhouse offers some workarounds at the expense of a little extra storage until a compaction is run similar to VACUUM. Clickhouse is to T…

I think both Clickhouse and TimeScaleDB are great systems with different design goals and approaches. Specifically I think Clickhouse is much better suited to "Event Logs" than "Metrics" storage (Clickhouse Inspired VM does well in this regard) I would just encourage all vendors to be more humble positioning their benchmarks. In my practice production behaviors for better or worse rarely resemble benchmark results

What is "Clickhouse Inspired VM"?

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#16

Post by dexwiz »

akulkarni wrote: post #13
csdvrx wrote: post #2

Key quote from the article: > Overall, although some TimescaleDB queries became faster by enabling compression but many others became bit slower probably due to decompression overhead. This may be the reason why TimescaleDB disable compression by default This matches my experience: ClickHouse is generally faster, and a better solution for time series (more robust, more mature, ...) unless you have a highly specific s…

I have no doubt that, as usual, akulkarni will make a good PR job / community outreach to explain why, numbers and experience be damned, TimescaleDB is better! I don't like responding to bullies and people who enter dialogues without good intentions. But since this is a public forum, I'll answer your comment: In general: ClickHouse is better than TimescaleDB for OLAP. TimescaleDB is better for time-series. If you don…

Honestly, you sound like the bully here hiding behind the overly positive language of the day in order to insult the character of your opponent.

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#17

Post by PeterZaitsev »

eatonphil wrote: post #15
PeterZaitsev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both Clickhouse and TimeScaleDB are great systems with different design goals and approaches. Specifically I think Clickhouse is much better suited to "Event Logs" than "Metrics" storage (Clickhouse Inspired VM does well in this regard) I would just encourage all vendors to be more humble positioning their benchmarks. In my practice production behaviors for better or worse rarely resemble benchmark results

What is "Clickhouse Inspired VM"?

VictoriaMetrics https://victoriametrics.com/

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#18

Post by akulkarni »

(Timescale co-founder)

I'll answer this here with a similar response that I gave Pradeep (the author) via Twitter.

I think ClickHouse is a great technology. It totally beats TimescaleDB for OLAP queries. I'll be the first to admit that.

What our (100+ hour, 3 month analysis) benchmark showed is that for _time-series workloads_, TimescaleDB fared better. [0]

Pradeep's analysis - while earnest - is essentially comparing OLAP style queries using a dataset that is not very representative of time-series workloads. Which is why the time-series benchmark suite (TSBS) [1] exists (which we did not create, although we now maintain it). I've asked Pradeep to compare using the TSBS - and he said he'd look into it. [2]

As a developer, I'm very wary of technologies that claim to be better at everything - especially those who hide their weaknesses. We don't do that at TimescaleDB. For those who read our benchmark closely, we clearly show where ClickHouse beats TimescaleDB, and where TimescaleDB does better. And - despite what many commenters on here may want you to think - we heap loads of praise on ClickHouse.

As a reader of HackerNews, I'm also tired of all the negativity that's developing on this site. People who bully. People who default to accusing others of dishonesty instead of trying to have a meaningful dialogue and reach mutual understanding. People who enter debates wanting to be right, versus wanting to identify the right answer. Disappointingly, this includes some visible influencers whom I personally know. We should all strive to do better, to assume positive intent, and have productive dialogues.

(This is why one of our values at TimescaleDB is "Assume Positive Intent." [3] I think Hacker News - and the world in general - would be a much better, happier, healthier place if we all just did that.)

[0] https://blog.timescale.com/blog/what-is-clickhouse-how-does-...

[1] https://github.com/timescale/tsbs

[2] https://twitter.com/p_chhetri/status/1455216425807745025

[3] https://www.timescale.com/careers

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#19

Post by monstrado »

While I really enjoyed this read, it'd be nice to see benchmarks which also measure Queries-Per-Second under a highly concurrent workload. I've been using ClickHouse to serve live analytics and this was something that I was most interested in.

Again, though...great writeup!

Re: TimescaleDB vs ClickHouse

#20

Post by staticassertion »

dexwiz wrote: post #16
akulkarni wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt that, as usual, akulkarni will make a good PR job / community outreach to explain why, numbers and experience be damned, TimescaleDB is better! I don't like responding to bullies and people who enter dialogues without good intentions. But since this is a public forum, I'll answer your comment: In general: ClickHouse is better than TimescaleDB for OLAP. TimescaleDB is better for time-series. If you don…

Honestly, you sound like the bully here hiding behind the overly positive language of the day in order to insult the character of your opponent.

OP made accusations, response was leveled and asked for positivity.
Post reply on HN