Jamie Grant
Launched in 2014, Grafana is an increasingly popular open source data visualisation and monitoring tool. It allows users to display near real time through a wide array of charts, graphs and alerts from several data sources and has been designed to let users easily expand its capabilities through its plugin framework.
In late 2018 AquaQ added kdb+ to the list of supported data sources (view it here), by developing a Grafana plugin based on Grafana’s open simpleJSON template. While this was well received due to the way in which it was implemented there were a number of intrinsic limitations to what could be done as well as a requirement for a large amount of code to be deployed server side. To try and address these we have been working on something new.
Our second kdb+ adaptor allows Grafana to communicate with kdb+ using web-socket connections, with data being serialised in both directions to increase transmission rates.
Users can create kdb+ queries either using a template query builder or by writing their own custom queries. The query builder allows users to easily and intuitively build simple select queries against a kdb+ instance, selecting the desired table and field(s) from drop downs as well as adding any ‘where’ clauses, grouping or aggregation required. If a user wants to display the results of a query more complex that what can be achieved through the query builder, or the results of something like a pre-defined function then this can be done through the free form query editor. The plugin also helps support the visualisation of large datasets by allowing users to conflate results into time based buckets.
The adaptor will shortly be available through AquaQs GitHub page (https://github.com/AquaQAnalytics), where we’d encourage users to give feedback or request features. We are also intending to add the adaptor to the Grafana Store.
If you would like to find out more information in the meantime you can contact us at : info@aquaq.co.uk
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