📌 TIP#2: Business event query usage and costs — the missing dashboard

tracegazer — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:13:03 GMT

If you've ever used the built-in "Log query usage and cost" dashboard to track and optimize your log query spending, you probably noticed there is no equivalent dashboard for business events.

I looked for it everywhere — the Hub, the documentation, the Community — and the closest thing available is the generic DPS Cost Allocation dashboard, which covers all capabilities but doesn't give you the granular, query-level detail you need to understand and optimize your fetch bizevents spending.

So I built one. Here it is.

What this dashboard covers

This dashboard mirrors the same approach as the log query usage dashboard, but focused entirely on business event queries. It includes:

Query volume statistics, trends, and costs — total GiB scanned, number of queries, and estimated cost over time.
Top 25 queries by billable volume — identify the most expensive fetch bizevents queries in your environment.
Event queries in Dashboards — detect which dashboard tiles are running fetch bizevents and how much they cost on reload.
Auto-refresh detection — flag dashboards with bizevents queries set to auto-refresh every minute (a common cost driver).
Queries not following best practices — find queries missing filter, scanLimit, samplingRatio, or limit with default timeframes, as described in the DQL Best Practices documentation.
Bucket utilization — validate your bizevents bucket segmentation strategy and identify optimization opportunities.
Detailed usage by Application and User — drill down into who is querying what and how much it costs.

How it works

The dashboard queries the dt.system.events tables — specifically BILLING_USAGE_EVENT and QUERY_EXECUTION_EVENT records — to calculate usage and costs. This is the same data source used by the log query usage dashboard, filtered for business event activity.

Access requires the storage:system:read permission. See default access policies for details.

Pricing configuration

The dashboard includes a Price variable that you can adjust to match your contract:

Licensing model Price variable value Explanation

Classic (DDUs)	`1.70`	DDU weight per GB for business event queries (docs)
DPS	Your rate card value (default: `0.0035` USD/GiB)	Events - Query price from your rate card (docs)

Note: Consecutive or parallel DPS contracts can have different price points. The cost calculated in this dashboard might differ from the official cost shown in the Account Management portal.

Why this matters

As business events adoption grows — through OneAgent payload capture, RUM, the bizevents API, log extraction via OpenPipeline, or Workflows — the query volume against the bizevents table can become a significant cost driver, especially when:

Dashboard tiles with fetch bizevents auto-refresh every minute across multiple users.
Queries scan large timeframes without proper filter or scanLimit constraints.
All data sits in a single default bucket instead of being segmented by use case or retention needs.

This dashboard helps you identify these patterns and take action before costs escalate.

Optimization tips

Extract metrics from business events via OpenPipeline — metric queries have no query cost and load faster on dashboards.
Segment data into dedicated buckets — filtering by bucket improves query performance and reduces scanned data (end-to-end example).
Follow DQL best practices — always use filter, set explicit timeframes, and consider samplingRatio for exploratory queries (best practices).
Disable auto-refresh on dashboards that don't require real-time data — or switch to metric-based tiles for those use cases.

Additional resources

Calculate your consumption of Events - Query (DPS) — docs
Calculate your consumption of Events - Retain (DPS) — docs
DQL Best Practices — docs
The value of business events: How IT can increase business agility — blog
Extract metrics from business events to increase the value of Business Analytics — blog
How to use DPS cost monitors — docs
Business events end-to-end example — docs

The dashboard JSON is attached below. Import it into your environment and adjust the Price variable to match your licensing model.

Feedback, improvements, and suggestions are welcome — let's make this a community resource! 🚀