Skip to content
Search ⌘K
Get started

Informational views overview

The full list of informational views available in TimescaleDB. Informational views provide detailed information about the state of your data, hypertables, chunks, and any jobs or policies you have in place

TimescaleDB makes complex database features like partitioning and data retention easy to use with our comprehensive APIs. TimescaleDB works hard to provide detailed information about the state of your data, hypertables, chunks, and any jobs or policies you have in place.

These informational views query TimescaleDB‘s internal catalog, system tables that store metadata about your database objects, configurations, and jobs. When you create a hypertable, add a retention policy, or schedule a job, TimescaleDB registers this information in its catalog. The views provide a convenient, user-friendly interface to access this metadata without directly querying internal tables.

Samples

Section titled “Samples”

Get all hypertables in your database

Section titled “Get all hypertables in your database”

View all hypertables with their size and compression status:

SELECT hypertable_name,
       num_dimensions,
       num_chunks,
       compression_enabled
FROM timescaledb_information.hypertables;

Check chunk information for a hypertable

Section titled “Check chunk information for a hypertable”

View all chunks for a specific hypertable:

SELECT chunk_name,
       range_start,
       range_end,
       is_compressed
FROM timescaledb_information.chunks
WHERE hypertable_name = 'conditions'
ORDER BY range_start DESC;

Monitor background jobs

Section titled “Monitor background jobs”

View all scheduled jobs and their next execution time:

SELECT job_id,
       application_name,
       schedule_interval,
       next_start
FROM timescaledb_information.jobs
ORDER BY next_start;

Check job execution history

Section titled “Check job execution history”

View recent job runs and their success/failure status:

SELECT job_id,
       last_run_started_at,
       last_successful_finish,
       last_run_status,
       total_runs,
       total_failures
FROM timescaledb_information.job_stats
ORDER BY last_run_started_at DESC
LIMIT 10;

View continuous aggregate details

Section titled “View continuous aggregate details”

Get information about all continuous aggregates:

SELECT view_name,
       view_definition,
       materialized_only,
       compression_enabled,
       finalized
FROM timescaledb_information.continuous_aggregates;

Available views

Section titled “Available views”

Hypertable and chunk information

Section titled “Hypertable and chunk information”

Columnstore information

Section titled “Columnstore information”

Continuous aggregates

Section titled “Continuous aggregates”

Jobs and policies

Section titled “Jobs and policies”

Stability

Section titled “Stability”

When building monitoring, alerting, or operational tools on top of TimescaleDB, it is critical to query the correct system schemas. TimescaleDB provides dedicated, stable views designed specifically for user introspection. However, it also relies on several internal schemas that manage database state.

Schemas and views for public consumption

Section titled “Schemas and views for public consumption”

For all monitoring, automation, and operational queries, you should exclusively use the views located in the timescaledb_information schema. These views are considered part of TimescaleDB’s public API. They are designed to be stable, human-readable, and safe to query. If TimescaleDB introduces changes to its underlying architecture, these views will be maintained or properly deprecated across major versions to prevent your operations from breaking.

Tips

When writing Grafana dashboards, Datadog integrations, or custom cron jobs, always prefix your queries with timescaledb_information.

Internal schemas to avoid

Section titled “Internal schemas to avoid”

TimescaleDB uses several internal schemas to manage metadata, distributed transactions, and hypertable state. Under no circumstances should you query, build tools upon, or modify tables and views within these schemas. These schemas serve a strictly internal purpose. These objects are actively refactored, altered, and removed in these schemas between minor releases to optimize database performance.

Warning

If you build monitoring on these internal schemas, your tools will inevitably break during database upgrades without warning.

Do not build dependencies on any objects in the following schemas:

  • _timescaledb_cache
  • _timescaledb_catalog
  • _timescaledb_internal

Experimental schema

Section titled “Experimental schema”

Any tables, views, or functions in the timescaledb_experimental schema are considered not ready for production services and breaking changes can happen at any time.