topic Re: DQL - I feel like an idiot in DQL

Master Dynatrace DQL Basics for Efficient Querying

PickleRick — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 08:51:45 GMT

OK, I'm trying to use DQL to monitor my environment for relevant events and insights, we've used "Classic" Dynatrace for about a year now and it's been great. We could immediately see problem databases and applications, and there's handy links already built into the UI that help me investigate further.

We've since turned on "Latest Dynatrace", and just this past week added a SQL Extension to monitor some problem databases. By default, Dynatrace is showing me basic graphs on memory usage, connections and deadlocks, but there's no drill-through.

OK, fair enough, into the DQL training I go. I've been at it for hours, and I'm no where closer. I get that DQL is one language to rule them all. I get that Grail contains entities, metrics and events, and theyre all stored in buckets. I feel like everything I've read\watched has told me in wonderful detail how great a swimming pool is - the water is refreshing, kids love it, and it's a great place to enjoy a beer on a Saturday afternoon. I still can't bloody swim!

How do I see what fields I can query? How do I explore relationships between tables (or buckets or whatever)? I feel like I'm stumbling through trying to find data to report on, where if I could see table and field names I can just go query them.

What the hell am I missing?

Re: DQL - I feel like an idiot

DanielS — Mon, 06 May 2024 12:39:31 GMT

I understand you, I have clients with the same frustration because they aren't from IT. They usually move freely between MDA and Data Explorer, but DQL is not for anybody. I think that Davis Copilot is going to be a great help for lots of people. Is a great move from Dynatrace but is taking too long to release. We are two months away from the year of the blog publication and we still hope that it will see the light of day for the majority of users.

Re: DQL - I feel like an idiot

krzysztof_hoja — Mon, 06 May 2024 18:29:57 GMT

Couple of additional thoughts:

None of "classic" functionality is lost. If you are used to what was offered before turning on "latest", it is still available, but just repackaged as "classic" apps.
DQL is a great tool for extending Dynatrace's functionality or doing analysis differently then it is offered out of the box but still the value should be delivered in easy to use way. There is nothing like: "you have learn DQL or Dynatrace is not for you"
You mentioned "SQL Extension", so I assume you use "Databases" app and it does not solve your use case. It is still quite fresh and still being extended, so any feedback is valuable as it helps to make it more useful. I will get someone responsible for it to peek your brain on details.

Kris

Re: DQL - I feel like an idiot

Eric_Yu — Mon, 06 May 2024 20:00:00 GMT

Also adding some tips here:

The describe command is very useful if you're looking to find the schema of a particular entity you're trying to query.
If you want to get a starting point to build your queries, you have snippets that can help you with that.

Re: DQL - I feel like an idiot

MarcMas — Tue, 07 May 2024 07:46:30 GMT

I think this documentation will help you. It describes every data type
Data models - Dynatrace Docs

Re: DQL - I feel like an idiot

peter_zahrer — Tue, 07 May 2024 14:57:54 GMT

Thanks for the feedback into this user journey. The key here is that all screens which were availabe in Classic Dynatrace are available in Latest Dynatrace. It would be great to understand at which point during the journey, the focus to DQL happened.

Was it because the classic apps in New Dynatrace were not delivering the same experience?
Because there was the need for a more specific report not provided by Dynatrace Classic apps, requiring deep analysis with DQL?

Thanks!