With the data explorer you can navigate all your data visually, without any NRQL knowledge. Use the data explorer to access, query and customize your data, create visualizations, and make connections between your services in a consistent and curated experience.
Need to perform a more detailed search? Read how to query your data.
Why it matters
Do you research the state of your systems? Do you need to plan resources, identify and respond to incidents, or troubleshoot faulty behaviors? The data explorer makes it easy to identify, fetch and visualize the data you are looking for through visual menus, without ever using NRQL or building queries.
With the data explorer you can:
Access events and metrics data in a quick, intuitive way.
Exploit the dimensionality of data by making it visible and easily actionable upon.
See data from different points of view: from raw data to different visualizations that provide insights on evolution, distribution, etc.
At the top of the page, click the Query your data icon.
At the Browse data dropdown, select Events or Metrics.
The data explorer is the portal to explore all the data you have in New Relic. You can explore events and metrics on the data explorer UI, or select the Logs and Traces query interfaces to explore those. You can also access the query builder any time by clicking on the tab.
Use the data explorer
The data explorer consists of a scoping section on the top (a), a data browsing area on the left (b), and a workspace (c).
To use the data explorer:
Define the scope of the exploration: select the account and data type (metric or event) you want to browse.
Use the blocks on the left to browse the available data for either events or metrics, and build your search. You can only select one element per block. Blocks are searchable.
Event type
Lists all available events for the selected account.
By default, events are sorted by Name.
Plot
Lists all the numeric attributes of the event previously selected.
The first item on the list is count(*), which is not an attribute. It calculates the count of the selected event.
By default attributes are sorted by Name.
Select the function that you want to plot. By default each attribute is set to the function Average.
Dimensions
Lists all the dimensions of the event and plot previously selected.
Dimensions are string values that provide information on the event.
They represent the cardinality, that is, the uniqueCount of the different values of that attribute in the selected time range. If there is only one element it shows the value of the attribute.
By default, dimensions are sorted by Name.
To explore APM timeslice data, select AppID, AppName, or EntityGuid as dimensions (or group by those dimensions). Otherwise, you'll get aggregated data for all entities.
Metric
Lists all the metrics available for the selected account.
By default, metrics are sorted by Name.
Dimensions
Lists all the dimensions of the metric previously selected.
Dimensions are string values that provide information on the metric.
They represent the cardinality, that is, the uniqueCount of the different values of that attribute in the selected time range. If there is only one element it shows the value of the attribute.
By default, dimensions are by Name.
Important
We use the metric system (including metric SI prefixes) to display our units.
Visualize and refine your exploration
The result of your exploration is displayed in the working space on the right.
Refine your exploration, or share your chart
At the working space you can see:
The querying area breaks down the query into its different constituents. Here you can easily read the result of your exploration as a NRQL query, and check the exact data being plotted.
If you are not familiar with NRQL, check this area to learn how queries are built.
The different parts of the query are:
[EVENTS ONLY]FROM: the event selected on the first block.
SELECT: the plot or metric selected. This input plots only one value and one function.
GROUP BY: represents the FACET clause, and groups the data by the selected dimension.
LIMIT: type in the amount of values you want to see.
WHERE: use this field to further filter results. This input plots n values.
Each item can be deleted from the query by clicking on the x.
You can see the full query, which is composed by the fields above and the time range selected with the time picker.
Tip
Need to do more advanced searches or customize your charts? From the data explorer you can access the query builder to edit the query.
By default data is displayed on a line chart. You can easily change to Area chart, Pie chart, and Bar chart using the chart picker. You can also choose to see your results' raw data as a table, or as in JSON format.
If you have selected a dimension, the chart is updated with the different facets. Below the chart you can see the facets' table with the list of facets and the value for each one.
Use the facet table to drill down data. By clicking on a facet, it is applied as a filter. The table stays visible so you can easily select another facet to continue your exploration.
You can get the chart as an image, share it as a link, or add it to a dashboard using the Options menu on the top right corner.
You can also copy the URL and share your whole exploration with other New Relic users.
Use cases
See the following examples to learn how and when to use the data explorer.
I’ve just connected new instrumentation and want to see if new data is available.
Select the account and event or metric that's generating the new data.
Use the different tools in the data explorer to toy around the new data that has become available: have a look at the raw data of that event or metric as a table, shape it as a list, or click to see it plotted as a chart.
After selecting an event or metric, discover the shape of the data in its dimensions. Guided by cardinality, you can see the different points of view of any data.
Found anything relevant? Save it to a dashboard or share it with a colleague.
I changed a custom event/metric and need to check if this change has been successful.
In the data explorer tab, select the account, data type and event/metric you made changes to.
Verify the entity is reporting data, and that all the attributes are being plotted.
Find the attribute you made changes to and check the update was successful.
I know there’s something off with an event/metric from an alert or dashboard. I need to know the root cause about the event/metric/attribute behavior.
In the data explorer, use the menus to select the event or metric that's not behaving as expected and let the data explorer plot that chart.
From there, you can drill down in the dimensions of that data and filter by those attributes that are relevant.
You can also see that data from different perspectives: its distribution, ranking of values, or evolution over time.
Found anything relevant? Save it to a dashboard or share it with a colleague.
