docs-v2/content/shared/influxdb3-get-started/_index.md

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This guide walks through the basic steps of getting started with {{% product-name %}}, including the following:

{{< children type="ordered-list" >}}

[!Tip]

Find support for {{% product-name %}}

The InfluxDB Discord server is the best place to find support for InfluxDB 3 Core and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise. For other InfluxDB versions, see the Support and feedback options.

Data model

The {{% product-name %}} server contains logical databases; databases contain tables; and tables are comprised of columns.

Compared to previous versions of InfluxDB, you can think of a database as an InfluxDB v2 bucket in v2 or an InfluxDB v1 db/retention_policy. A table is equivalent to an InfluxDB v1 and v2 measurement.

Columns in a table represent time, tags, and fields. Columns can be one of the following types:

  • String dictionary (tag)
  • int64 (field)
  • float64 (field)
  • uint64 (field)
  • bool (field)
  • string (field)
  • time (time with nanosecond precision)

In {{% product-name %}}, every table has a primary key--the ordered set of tags and the time--for its data. The primary key uniquely identifies each and determines the sort order for all Parquet files related to the table. When you create a table, either through an explicit call or by writing data into a table for the first time, it sets the primary key to the tags in the order they arrived. Although InfluxDB is still a schema-on-write database, the tag column definitions for a table are immutable.

Tags should hold unique identifying information like sensor_id, building_id, or trace_id. All other data should be stored as fields.

Tools to use

The following table compares tools that you can use to interact with {{% product-name %}}. This tutorial covers many of the recommended tools.

Tool Administration Write Query
influxdb3 CLI {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}}
InfluxDB HTTP API {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}}
InfluxDB 3 Explorer {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}}
InfluxDB 3 client libraries - {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}}
InfluxDB v2 client libraries - {{< icon "check" >}} -
InfluxDB v1 client libraries - {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}}
InfluxDB 3 processing engine {{< icon "check" >}} {{< icon "check" >}}
Telegraf - {{< icon "check" >}} -
Chronograf - - -
influx CLI - - -
influxctl CLI - - -
InfluxDB v2.x user interface - - -
Third-party tools
Flight SQL clients - - {{< icon "check" >}}
Grafana - - {{< icon "check" >}}

{{< show-in "core" >}} {{< page-nav next="/influxdb3/core/get-started/setup/" nextText="Set up InfluxDB 3 Core" >}} {{< /show-in >}}

{{< show-in "enterprise" >}} {{< page-nav next="/influxdb3/enterprise/get-started/setup/" nextText="Set up InfluxDB 3 Enterprise" >}} {{< /show-in >}}