[Hawkular-dev] Fwd: [hawkular-dev] Grafana querying usability

[Thomas Segismont]

1/ sounds best to me, as it would give users the power of a query language.
But auto-completion could be quite a challenge there, couldn't it?

2017-01-18 9:54 GMT+01:00 Joel Takvorian <jtakvori at redhat.com>:

> Hi everybody,
>
> I would like to get some opinions on the hawkular-grafana-datasource
> querying usability, especially if you had the opportunity to create
> dashboards recently and had to juggle with querying by metric name and by
> tag.
>
> Currently the panel displays different elements depending on you're
> querying by metric name (see picture: https://raw.githubusercontent.
> com/hawkular/hawkular-grafana-datasource/master/docs/images/
> search-by-name.png )
>
> Querying by name is quite straightforward, but it can be cumbersome when
> there's a lot of available metrics and you have to scroll among suggestions
> to find the one you want.
> ​
>
> Or by tag  (see picture: https://raw.githubusercontent.
> com/hawkular/hawkular-grafana-datasource/master/docs/images/
> search-by-tag.png )
>
> ​
> The "query by tag" interface is not very intuitive IMO (you define a list
> of key-value pairs), moreover to this date there is no auto-completion on
> tag name.
>
> There's been some features in metrics recently that, I think, can enable a
> better UI on Grafana side. First, there is Micke's feature "Allow fetching
> of available tagNames" [1] that enables suggestions (auto-completion) on
> tag name. And most importantly there's the new "tag query language" that
> could (should) have its place in Grafana.
>
>
> So I would have several suggestions for improving the UI and queries.
>
> *1*: First of all I think we can remove the "Search by name" / "Search by
> tag" selector, and allow searching by name AND by tag at the same time:
> providing tags would refine the available metrics in the metrics text field
> suggestions (auto-completion). If this text field is left blank, all
> available metrics are displayed.
>
> Then, there's several scenarios to take advantage of the new hawkular
> metrics features:
>
> *2a*: keep current key/value pairs system, but improve with adding
> suggestion on tag names.
>
> *2b*: replace key-value pairs with the new tags query, via a simple text
> field:
>
>
> We may or may not include syntax validation here. We must provide some
> documentation on that.
>
> *2c*: replace key-value pairs with the new tags query, with a dedicated
> "builder" UI:
>
> ​Each of these boxes in tags query would have a contextual auto-completion
> feature:
> - suggestions on 1: list of tag keys
> - suggestions on 2: list of operators (=, !=, IN, NOT IN)
> - suggestions on 3: list of tag values for the given key (with some
> slights differences on brackets if it's the first element or not; closing
> bracket as a choice if it's not the first element)
> - suggestions on 4: operators AND / OR
> ​
>
> The 2b option is obviously simpler, very fast to implement. It has the
> downside of loosing all auto-completion capabilities, even compared to the
> current version.
>
> 2c looks nicer and more intuitive in its usage, people won't have to read
> the doc to use it. However there's several downsides:
>   - Need to implement the logic => need for time for development, adds
> complexity to our grafana plugin.
>   - Introduces a dependency to the language on server side. When the
> language evolves, we'll have to maintain this as well.
>
>
> Ideas & thoughts? I think it's preferable to proceed in several steps. In
> a first time I could implement *1* and *2a*, and later (and maybe giving
> some time to the language to be "stabilized") going with *2c*.
>
> [1] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/HWKMETRICS-532
>
> Thanks
> Joel
>
>
>
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>
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