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Graphing Non Time Series SQL Data in Grafana
Video Lecture
Description
Grafana can graph time series data from many types of data sources extremely well. But sometimes you just want to graph, simple non time series data. I.e, data without timestamps, basic tables that show simple statistics.
Example non time series data as a flat table.
| id | name | value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cat | 56 |
| 2 | Dog | 35 |
| 3 | Lizard | 41 |
| 4 | Crocodile | 22 |
| 5 | Koala | 26 |
| 6 | Cassowary | 29 |
| 7 | Peacock | 19 |
| 8 | Emu | 10 |
| 9 | Kangaroo | 13 |
We would like to see this simple example data, as a graph similar to below.
For this exercise, we can quickly create a new database named exampledb and allow our grafana database user select permissions on it.
mysql
> CREATE DATABASE exampledb;
> show databases;
You should see a new database named exampledb.
Lets now create a simple table with some data that we can query.
> CREATE TABLE `exampledb`.`simple_table` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`username` varchar(45) DEFAULT NULL,
`total` decimal(10,0) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=10 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
Insert Statement
> INSERT INTO `exampledb`.`simple_table`
(`username`,
`total`)
VALUES
('Cat',56),
('Dog',35),
('Lizard',41),
('Crocodile',22),
('Koala',26),
('Cassowary',29),
('Peacock',19),
('Emu',10),
('Kangaroo',13);
Check data exists
> SELECT * FROM `exampledb`.`simple_table`;
Now allow our grafana database user select permissions on the table.
> GRANT SELECT ON exampledb.simple_table TO 'grafana'@'###.###.###.###';
> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
> quit;
Explore the Data in Grafana
Open the Explore tab, select MySQL as the data source and show SQL editor.
Replace the default sql with this below
SELECT
username AS metric,
total as value
FROM exampledb.simple_table
ORDER BY id
Now convert it to a time series by adding NOW() as time_sec
SELECT
NOW() as time_sec,
username AS metric,
total as value
FROM exampledb.simple_table
ORDER BY id
You can test updating the data in the table, and seeing it in Grafana by opening your MySQL prompt and executing,
UPDATE `exampledb`.`simple_table` SET `total` = 50 WHERE `username` = 'Koala';
Grafana 9 and Ubuntu 22.04 Notes
There are no considerable differences to be aware of as shown and discussed in the video.