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

[Joel Takvorian]

Thomas, I think you mean the "2b" proposal? (with a simple text field to
type custom query in). I can't see how to provide auto-completion with
that. I think if we go this way, we loose auto-completion.

On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 10:25 AM, Thomas Segismont <tsegismo at redhat.com>
wrote:

> 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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