Prometheus is the open source standard for metrics monitoring. The standard for querying Prometheus is the Prometheus Query Language (PromQL). Engineers use PromQL to query and aggregate Prometheus metrics in real time. Check out our blog, “An Introduction to PromQL”, for more information.
As with any query language, PromQL has concepts you have to learn and a specific syntax you must follow. On top of that, with PromQL queries, you need to specify the metric name, filters based on label values, and the various ways to arrange data based on ranges, logic, functions, and aggregations. With so many possible variations and metric types to choose from, PromQL is a challenging query language for engineers to fully understand and utilize. This is why Chronosphere created Query Builder, a way to quickly and simply create queries in PromQL, even if you aren’t a PromQL wizard. This enhancement is now available to all Chronosphere customers.
Query Builder has its roots in a solution by PromLabs called PromLens, which was developed by Julius Volz, co-founder of Prometheus and creator of PromQL. We’ve worked closely with Julius on our common goal of helping engineering teams and end users construct PromQL queries simply, quickly, and with high accuracy. Julius said, “Chronosphere is dedicated to further enabling Prometheus users, which is why I partnered with them on Query Builder. I’m excited to see how it will evolve in the hands of Chronosphere customers.”
Query Builder has the following benefits to end-user and SRE developers:
There are also significant benefits to the central observability team, specifically:
Query Builder is built seamlessly into Chronosphere’s console and is extremely intuitive, even for a user not experienced in PromQL. To get started:
Query Builder also allows you to troubleshoot and visualize queries and results right away. When building a query, the tool automatically produces a visualization of the query and lets you know of any potential errors or common pitfalls with suggested fixes applied with a click of a button. Query Builder takes the guesswork out of the query building process, enabling you to query with greater accuracy and confidence. The real-time feedback will also inform you about the size of your query result, instantly displaying the number of expected metrics or label occurrences when hovering over each given value. This level of insight enables you to fine tune your queries — whether it’s increasing the aggregation interval to reduce the size of the query or it’s choosing a different metric type to get the metrics you’re really looking for.
See the below image for how Query Builder is integrated into the Chronosphere console:
With Query Builder, engineers — whether new or experienced PromQL users — can easily and quickly chart the data they want. Ramping up a new user on PromQL can be time consuming, but Query Builder makes the learning curve more manageable. End-users and central observability teams are now able to spend less time crafting and troubleshooting their PromQL queries, and more time on driving high value work for their teams.
To learn more about Chronosphere and Query Builder, visit https://chronosphere.io/ or request a demo.
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