Timescaledb: Grafana Graphical Query Builder

[dianasaur323]

Driven by popular demand, TimescaleDB is working on a graphical query builder for Grafana that works with PostgreSQL, and by extension, TimescaleDB. The query builder allows you to interactively build SQL SELECT statements with suggested functions, columns, and where clauses. We’ll also add support for user-friendly functions like rate, increase, and percentile. You can continue to hand-write SQL functions to pull metrics as before.

We are planning additional features that will make this experience even better for our users, and would love your feedback. Please vote below on which features you’d like to see added into our graphical query builder. Feel free to add additional suggestions as comments.

[dianasaur323]

Window functions

[dianasaur323]

JOINs

[dianasaur323]

Subselects

[dianasaur323]

time_bucket(), first(), last()

[dianasaur323]

First class JSONB support

[abrownsword]

I'm not sure if this is covered by one or more of the items mentioned above but the most common problem I have with grafana and timescaledb is that together they don't seem to properly fetch a good value for the oldest point in the graph. My db is a series of rows in time-order, and a quantity is assumed to remain at its last inserted value until a new value is inserted. Thus when grafana renders a plot starting at time X, it really should search backward through the db until it finds the last inserted value before time X... and then use that as the oldest value in the plot. Unfortunately this doesn't happen, and usually that means that the data in the graph doesn't start at the left edge of the plot.

[dianasaur323]

@abrownsword Ah, yes. We've implemented a version of LOCF within Grafana, although I don't believe it has been released yet. However, this doesn't search past the existing window in Grafana. This is more complex for us to support, so we'll have to discuss internally. cc @svenklemm in case he has more updates.

[abrownsword]

Thanks to Google: LOCF = Last Observation Carried Forward

IMO, this is a critical feature for a time series database. Since time series is the bread-and-butter of the product, it is a copout to say that you can achieve this externally via some complex query... instead I think there ought to get a set of primitives implemented (in the database) that support the most common and important types of time-oriented data queries. They can then be optimized internally, and also the more challenging edge cases can be implemented by the experts.

[dianasaur323]

@abrownsword Don't worry, we are on it! This kind of feedback is essential to making our product more usable, so keep it coming.

[rymoore]

Any update on the availability of this query builder?

[abrownsword]

There is mention of something that sounds suspiciously like this feature in the latest Grafana beta release notes. I'm waiting for them to get out of beta before trying it.

[svenklemm]

The graphical query builder will be included in Grafana 5.3 which is currently in beta.

https://community.grafana.com/t/release-notes-v5-3-x/10244

[mfreed]

https://grafana.com/blog/2018/10/15/make-time-series-exploration-easier-with-the-postgresql/timescaledb-query-editor/