Metric Groups & Aliases

Wildcard Grouping

Wildcard grouping is useful for selecting many related metrics. The Instrumental Query Language uses dots (.) as part delimiters, and supports ? for single-part matching and * for multi-part matching.

Single-Part Wildcard Group

The single-part wildcard (?) pattern will match one part of the name:

?.cpu

would return the metrics a.cpu and b.cpu but not staging.a.cpu.

Multi-Part Wildcard Group

Unlike the single-part (?) pattern, the wildcard (*) will match many parts of a metric. It uses the pattern:

test.*
test.db-*
test.db-*.cpu

List Group

When submitting expressions via the metrics API, you can use the semi-colon as a delimiter between multiple expressions. Note: this is equivalent to viewing multiple expressions on a graph in the Instrumental UI.

test.metric_a;test.metric_b

Aliases

Complex expressions can be hard to follow, so aliases let you assign any name to an expression so it can be understood at a glance. Aliases are created with the as keyword:

test.metric_a as metric_a

which will return the values of test.metric_a under the name metric_a. If you use the as keyword with a group of metrics, each of the metrics returned will have their name prefixed with the alias provided. For example, if your account had the metrics test.a, test.b, and test.c, the following request:

test.* as mytest

would return the metrics mytest.test.a, and, mytest.test.c.other