Data explorer

Data explorer greatly enhances your abilities to query and chart metrics.

Analyze multidimensional metrics, whether built in to Dynatrace or ingested from StatsD, Prometheus, Telegraf, and others channels.
Coming soon: analyze events and logs.
Choose from any of five visualizations: graph, pie, single value, table, or top list.
Coming soon: more visualizations, including a heat map and world map.
Add your visualization right to your dashboards for easy access and sharing.
Provides foundation for metric calculation in charts on dashboards.

Migrating custom charts

Dynatrace now has two ways to create charts for your dashboards:

The new Data explorer, which is described in this help topic
The old custom charts functionality

If you have created custom charts in the past, we recommend that you switch to the new Data explorer charts. For details, see Migration from custom charts below.

Quick start

Create a chart

In the Dynatrace menu, go to Explore data.
On the Build tab, build a query.
- Select a metric (for example, CPU usage %)
- Choose an aggregation (for example, Average, Minimum, or Maximum)
- Select Split by dimensions
- Specify Filter by criteria
For details on building a query, see Query components and concepts and Examples below.
optional To review or edit the code for your query, switch to the Code tab.
If you want to add another metric, select Add metric and repeat the previous step.
When you have specified your metrics, select Run query to take a first look at the chart.
Use the Settings panel to configure chart settings. The chart is updated with each change.

When you are satisfied with your chart, you can use it within Data explorer immediately or save it to a dashboard for future use.

Use the chart in 'Data explorer'

Chart elements are active. For example:

To see details in tooltips, hover over chart elements
To drill down from a problematic (red) element, select it.
To hide or show a chart element, select the corresponding label in the chart legend

Pin the chart to a dashboard

To save the chart as a dashboard tile, select Pin to dashboard.

To return from the dashboard to Data explorer with the chart open for viewing and editing, open the menu in the upper-right corner of the tile and select View details. Now two buttons are displayed in the upper-right of the Data explorer:

Save changes to dashboard—saves the chart to a same tile and dashboard you used to open the Data explorer. If you have made any changes, they will update the tile on your dashboard.
Pin to dashboard—saves the chart as a tile on a different dashboard. You might want to pin the same chart (perhaps with filtering differences) to various dashboards.

For details about pinning tiles to dashboards, see Pin tiles to your dashboard.

Query components and concepts

Every metric query is composed of multiple optional components:

entry fields

query components

Query component	Description
Metric name	In the UI, select the metric name in the Filter metrics by… box. This can be a built-in metric or a metric ingested from a channel such as StatsD, Prometheus, or Telegraf over our metrics API.
Aggregation	Every metric provides the same possible aggregations, which can be specified when selecting `AVG`, `MAX`, `MIN`, `SUM`, `COUNT` or `MEDIAN`. The aggregation enables you to specify how the results of a metric query are supposed to be aggregated over time and the reported dimensions of the selected metric. The query will always provide the statistically most accurate results for a given query, even if certain metrics provide different statistics, which depends on the nature of each metric.
Grouping	By default, a query groups all dimensions using the metric's default aggregation.
Scope	The scope is determined by any Filter you set. By default, the scope is (include all). You can filter your query by selecting one of the options in the Filter box and specifying the value, such as selecting `Host` and then selecting one or more hosts by which to filter your query.

Limitations

5 metrics maximum per chart
20 series per metric

Examples

Table with 2 metrics (split)

In this example, we select metrics CPU usage % and Memory used %, break it down by host for both, and display it as a table, so that the rows are hosts and the columns show the metric values per host.

A: CPU usage %, Average, Split by Host, Filter by (include all)
B: Memory used %, Average, Split by Host, Filter by (include all)
Visualization: Table

To add the Split by value for a metric, select the + in that row, select Split by, and then set the Split by value to Host.
Adding Split by to a metric query

The complete query should look like this:
example metric selection

Example tile:
example table tile

Graph with 2 metrics

In this example, we select the same metrics and display them as a graph.

When you set Visualization to Graph, the Visual settings are displayed, where you can select how to graph each metric. In this case, CPU usage % is an area chart (the area between 0 and the value of the metric is filled in) and Memory used % is a line chart (a single line representing the value of the metric over time).

A: CPU usage %, Average, Split by Host, Filter by (include all)
B: Memory used %, Average, Split by Host, Filter by (include all)
Visualization: Graph
Visual settings:
- A = Area
- B = Line

The complete query should look like this:
example configuration for chart tile

Example tile:
example chart tile

Other vizualizations to explore

Single value
Pie
Top list

Migration from custom charts

If you have created custom charts in the past, your old custom charts are still suppported, but you should think about migrating them to Data explorer.

Are my charts deprecated?

A small warning icon is now displayed in the upper-right corner of each custom chart tile on your dashboard. Hover over the warning icon to see a deprecation message.

What should I do?

If you have created custom charts in the past, we recommend that you switch to Data explorer. We are confident that you will prefer Data explorer, and we aren't going to support custom charts forever.

But don't worry if you're not ready to switch:

Your custom charts are still safely pinned to your dashboards.
You can still create and edit custom charts.
You have plenty of time to switch to Data explorer. We are still receiving and addressing feedback from customers like you. There isn't even an official end-of-life date yet. But we do promise to let you know the date as soon as it's settled.
You can migrate your old charts to Data explorer automatically. To give it a try, see below.

Migration limitations

The chart migration process has the following limitations:

While the Data explorer offers more powerful filtering capabilities, it does not support some custom chart filters. When migrating charts, these filters are skipped.
The Data explorer does not support some metrics configured before Summer 2019. These metrics have been deprecated for two years and cannot be imported over the API. When migrating custom charts with these metrics to Data explorer, Dynatrace will display an empty Data explorer page.
In some cases, a migrated chart configuration can only be viewed on the Code tab and not on the Build tab.

Chart migration

To migrate a custom chart to the new Data explorer chart format

Review Migration limitations above before proceeding.
Display the dashboard containing your custom chart and then select Edit to edit the dashboard.
Select the custom chart and then select Configure custom chart to open it on the Custom chart page.
In the You're missing out on better charts message, select Preview upgraded chart.
This loads your deprecated custom chart in Data explorer, where you can review and adjust chart settings.
When you are satisfied with the chart appearance, save it to a dashboard.
- If you no longer need the original chart and you want to replace it with the new (converted) chart on the same dashboard, select Save changes to dashboard.
- If you want to keep a copy of the original chart for now, select Pin to dashboard to pin the converted chart as a new chart to the same dashboard or another dashboard.