Extend Dashboard Variables to also store arrays

[cvictor_slm]

Hidden dashboard variables can be stored as numbers or strings.  I would like to be able to store arrays (such as DQL output) into a variable as well.

For instance, I have a dashboard with 21 tiles, each of which runs a query against a table, extracting the segment name and count for a single segment of the data.  The query is essentially the same for all tiles, except for the filter to return different segments.  The cost is high in time to run the queries and $'s as the table is very large even and the 3 hour window for the query encompasses 42Gb.   

If I could retrieve data for all of the segments with a single DQL query by using Summarize By and store it in a hidden variable, this would save much time and money.  The tiles could then each pull the count for their segment from the variable.

[MaximilianoML · Accepted solution]

Hello @cvictor_slm,

The closest workaround at the moment is to use a hidden Code variable, execute the heavy query once there, and return a serialized structure that other tiles can consume in a limited way. There is also a Dynatrace Community tip (somewhere, I didn't found but I already saw) showing the general pattern of reducing duplicate dashboard queries by storing shared results in variables and reusing them across tiles.

So I’d frame this as a Product idea: support hidden dashboard variables as reusable structured datasets (array / JSON table / DQL result set), so one expensive query can feed many visualizations. That would reduce duplicate scans, improve dashboard load time, and lower DPS/Grail query cost for large datasets like yours.